KARACHI: City administration has decided to stop double parking at charged parking spots in the business district to avert frequent traffic jams and ensure smooth flow of traffic, it emerged on Monday.

Official sources told Dawn that a meeting, held with Commissioner Iftikhar Shallwani in the chair, reviewed the charged parking projects along the busy roads and streets in South district as double parked vehicles affected the traffic flow and created gridlock.

They said that DIG Traffic Jawed Mahar, who was among the participants of the meeting, pointed out different parking spots where traffic remained clogged due to double-parked vehicles, creating a great deal of inconvenience to commuters.

The meeting was also attended by deputy commissioner of South and East districts, representative of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, district municipal corporations and other civic bodies.

They said that the commissioner told the meeting that Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had taken notice of the traffic jams due to double parking at certain charged parking spots and ordered to take immediate action in this regard to ease the traffic situation in the city.

They said that the participants of the meeting discussed in detail the objectives of the initiative of charged parking system and concluded that the double parking of vehicles on charged parking sites had actually become a nuisance.

The commissioner said that the charged parking system was introduced for the facilitation of parking of vehicles systematically to avoid traffic congestion at all busy roads in the city.

The DIG Traffic told the meeting that there was a great need to review the locations allowed for charged parking on busy and key roads as at most locations it was badly affecting the traffic flow.

It was decided that the DC South would prepare a report to find out the locations where charged parking was causing traffic congestion on the roads and how that could be removed.

The DC was also asked to submit a report about the places where motorbikes were being parked on footpaths.

Meanwhile, the commissioner told Dawn that he had sought entire record of charged parking contracts given by the KMC, DMCs and other civic bodies as the city administration had received several complaints against the parking contractors.

He said that double parking of vehicles on the charged parking spots was illegal as the contracts were awarded only for single parking.

KMC’s Metropolitan Commissioner Dr Syed Saif-ur-Rehman told Dawn that traffic congestion mainly caused by the double-parked vehicles in Saddar and its neighbourhoods also had a terrible impact on the traffic flow in other parts of the city.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2019