Metered parking on The Mall from March

[LahoreEstate]

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
By Ali Raza

LAHORE

After the first week of March, visitors and shoppers coming to The Mall will witness a metered parking zone where they will have to pay Rs 10 per hour for parking their vehicles.

This parking zone will be from Shahdin Manzil to Masjid-e-Shuhada. There will be two entry and exit points to this new parking zone. The first entry point will be at the start of the side road in front of the Shahdin Manzil and people coming from Queens Road will use this entrance. The second entrance is the road cut after the traffic signal at Punjab Assembly and this entrance will be used by the people travelling on The Mall towards the GPO.

The two exit points of this parking lot will be the roads leading to Lawrence Road and Regal Chowk from Masjid-e-Shuhada while the road cut, which at present is connecting The Mall in front of Masjid-e-Shuhada with the side road, will be blocked and can only be used in emergency situation. As many as 320 cars can be parked at a time in this parking zone.

People using this parking zone will have to pay while no charges will be taken from motorcyclists. This initiative was taken following the directions of the Punjab chief minister who specifically instructed the CDGL to exempt motorcyclists from the parking fees.

If a person wanted to park his/her vehicle for more than one hour then he should take a ticket for two or three hours initially or he can also extend his parking status by getting a new ticket after an one hour and ten minutes.

The CDGL has also authorised a private company managing the parking zone to impose fines on the vehicles for wrong parking, extending parking of a vehicle without taking a new parking slip, not displaying parking ticket from inside the vehicle’s front window and etc.

The company’s security staff will clamp the tyre of such a vehicle and it can not be allowed to move till payment of fine, which will start from Rs 50 and can exceed to Rs 500 in case of extreme violation.

All the parking token/slips machines are based on solar power so in case of loadshedding, the commuters will not face any problem. This makes the parking zones environmentally-friendly.

The parking zone will be expanded further and in the next phase, it will be established on side lane from Regal Chowk to State Bank building and the side road from Cathedral School to Panorama Centre, said Maqsood Ahmed, Project Director of Meter Parking. He said the City District Government Lahore (CDGL) has hired management services of his company, AZCOMM, to run different metered parking zones in the provincial capital.

“Initially we are given a contract of installing 16 metered parking machines out of which ten were installed at Liberty’s metered parking and six will be installed at The Mall’s first metered parking zone,” he said.

He said that the latest ticketing equipment of a leading French firm was installed at the metered parking. A central control room has also been established in town Hall to monitor the ticketing equipment, revenue and status of parking zones.

Answering a question about parking of motorcycles, he said no charges would be collected from motorcyclists. He said the motorcycles will be parked in inner roads between the shopping centres.

He said in the parking zone, motorists would find machines at a distance of 30 meters and can get tokens from any of the machines. He said this would end all complaints of the motorists regarding the behaviour of contractors as well as rates, which they are facing in other parts of the city.

The company’s uniformed facilitators will guide the motorists about getting parking slips from the machines and will also provide them change at the spot, he said, adding the commuters can also lodge a complaint against any facilitator in case of rude behaviour or any other issue.

He said 90 per cent work regarding parking lanes for cars have been completed at The Mall while the remaining 10 per cent was expected to be completed within the next two hours. The remaining work also included installation of six token machines, he concluded.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=163262