Parking fees: It’s the same old story
Of all the measures tried in the past by civic authorities to decongest Nairobi city and make life easier for motorists and pedestrians, only one is likely to succeed: taxing the bejesus out of those fellows who still believe that driving is a basic necessity of life, and then following them to their estates and taxing them some more.
The reason this will happen is that Kenyans have generally proved to be timorous keyboard warriors who will howl in protest for an hour and then resign to fate until another scheme to part them with their meagre earnings is hatched.
A proposal to charge motorists a maximum of Sh100 an hour for parking in Nairobi’s Central Business District, and an even more outrageous idea to charge them parking fees in select estates, should have raised the hackles of citizens – be they motorists or ordinary folk who will all be affected one way or the other.
However, this outrage will be short-lived and won’t progress into any form of organised protests as would happen in other countries, and unless the courts intervene, in the end, everyone will pay dearly.
Clobbered silly
Don’t get me wrong; I am not in any sense inciting the private motorists to pour into city streets chanting “Haki yetu!” If they did that, they would be clobbered silly and the majority of the city’s denizenry would cheer lustily and probably lend a hand to the forces of law and order. What such people cannot fathom right now is that if parking fees are raised to such dizzying heights, the folks who ferry them around will have no choice but to push the added costs to them.
The main reasons City Hall wants to raise parking charges are quite understandable; Nairobi must be one of the cheapest cities in the world for private motorists to park all day. Secondly, it is a fact that the city needs more revenue to run its affairs and, of course, parking fees are a low-hanging fruit. However, it is rumoured that the city loses at least a third of the fees it should collect to crooks, among them its employees, who collude with “parking boys” to sell slots to motorists. Common sense would dictate that city authorities should first seal all the loopholes into which county revenue disappears before opening the valves wider.
Charging parking fees per hour is not a new idea. In the past, every parking slot had a meter into which the motorists deposited the required number of coins depending on how long they were likely to occupy the slot. But then, of course, life was simple; there were not too many vehicles, and the fee charged was not prohibitive. Today, all that has changed–demand for parking space has far outstripped supply, and it makes economic sense to sell the slots at a higher rate.
Breathe again
That way the demand will go down, with two obvious advantages: Vehicular congestion will ease and with it traffic jams, and if fewer people drive into town there will be less air pollution and people can breathe again. However, a simple question remains: what happens to those who have to work a minimum of eight hours, five days a week? How many of them can afford to pay Sh15,000 per month for instance, unless they are millionaires, in which case they can easily secure private parking spaces?
Let us get this straight; most of the cars that clog the transport sector do not belong to the wealthy; they belong to members of the lower middle class who have no choice but to drive for lack of alternatives.
Most of the vehicles are on loan anyway and if such people were to be asked, they would use public means. However, the unruly and unreliable nature of the transport sector makes that option unattractive. By the time you get to work, you are tousled, stressed and unproductive. Pretty soon, you start worrying whether on arrival at home, your phone will be in your pocket and your wallet in its place. However, that is neither here nor there.
Reducing pollution
What is more important is why employees would need to use personal cars in the first place if a functioning mass transport system accomplished all that City Hall wants done – decongesting the city, reducing pollution, and earning steady revenue from PSVs and other public transport systems.
Many studies have in the past been done and specific proposals made on how to reduce traffic jams and ease congestion, but none has worked so far.
Clearly, light passenger trains are not enough. A system of underground trains (subways), a tram system, and the much-hyped Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) would help greatly, but we have prioritised the building of an expensive expressway right above the city – for the elite.
If one day our leaders thought about the needs of the common Kenyan and how to make things work, the city fathers would be justified in making those who insist on driving and parking in the CBD pay dearly for the privilege. BY DAILY NATION
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