By Janice Ponce de Leon, Staff Reporter www.gulfnews.com
Dubai: Double parking continues to be rampant in Dubai’s commercial areas and residents say this causes massive delays.
Vehicles double-parked in the busy Naif area of Deira. This area has limited parking space and single-lane roads, making it difficult to navigate.
Just like it is a problem in most cosmopolitan cities, double parking slows down the traffic flow, especially during rush hour and weekends, Dubai motorists said.
Residents Gulf News spoke to said this occurs in the same places most of the time, especially in busy commercial areas in old Dubai where people get takeaways, groceries, make deliveries. Other places in new Dubai are getting busier as well.
Naif and other areas in Deira top the list of the places where double parking is common, motorists said. Baniyas Square, Al Fahidi, Meena Bazaar, Al Karama, Jumeirah, Al Barsha, Al Quoz, Al Ghusais, even the service roads on Shaikh Zayed Road near the Trade Centre Roundabout are other problem areas.
During a random drive around these busy areas, Gulf News noted that the primary reason for double parking is the limited number of parking spaces in some areas. But even in areas where there were parking spaces just one or two metres away, some people couldn’t be bothered to walk a short distance and still chose to double-park.
“I used to live in Naif and the parking problem was one of the reasons why I moved. I had been late to meetings on many occasions because someone decided to block my parking while buying something from a shop in the area,” Jonathan Campos, 37, a Filipino sales supervisor, told Gulf News.
“I called police maybe around six to 10 times to clear the traffic because most roads there are one-way. There’s no room to overtake a vehicle that’s double-parked,” he added.
In 2014, Dubai Police issued 168,107 fines to people who double parked on the road that disrupted traffic flow while 172,851 fines were issued for parking in prohibited areas. Each fine is Dh200.
Rajkumar Pancholia, an Indian businessman whose office is located near Dubai Museum, said double parking is so common in the area that it causes unnecessary traffic jams.
“Sometimes it causes me delays for about 10 to 20 minutes. We wait for the person to come back so the people behind me get stuck as well,” Pancholia said. More info
