Krasnodar, 7 September. Despite the system of municipal parking lots offering quite convenient payment methods, uncontrolled parking of private cars remain one of the main problems in Krasnodar.
Since the beginning of the year, traffic police officers have issued 2,726 tickets for illegal parking. Say, at Rashpilevskaya Street, next to the Gallery Mall, many owners park their cars not just directly under the forbidding signs but close to bus-stops, standing in the way of the bus drivers who have to drop off passengers there.
Experts agree that a more severe fining system, if introduced, could change the situation.
“Violations of the parking regulations are a usual phenomenon in our city, and regretfully it is related to the fact that the car owners are hardly punished for them – traffic police officers pay little attention to this problem,” Marina Repeshchuk, leader of the “Transport Initiative” public movement, said.
She considers it very important to raise the amount of the fine and to improve the work aimed at identification of the violators. At present, the fines are like a drop in the sea that cannot affect the situation whatsoever.
Yelena Shuvalova, coordinator of the Help Your City public movement, agrees that the system of penalties may in fact positively affect the situation with chaotic parking, but she notes that it is at the same time important to open parking spaces at affordable prices, and analyse the necessity of putting a forbidding sign in this or that place.
“I believe that it is necessary to hold an analysis of expediency of forbidding signs in certain parts of the city. I can give you one vivid example: after the repair works at Chkalov Street, no-parking signs were put there. It is unclear why – for no traffic jams had ever been there. Now parking is forbidden along the entire street,” Yelena Shuvalova said. “I think such things cannot be tolerated, a more thorough road analysis is needed.”
In August, cars equipped with Typhoon mobile complexes appeared in Krasnodar streets. The equipment ‘remembers’ the number plate, the date and the time of the violation. The idea of Typhoons must have become useful as it must have relieved the police of part of their work. But go-getting locals found the way how to remain invisible even if their cars get into the crosshairs of mobile complexes. Marina Repeshchuk says that many car owners hang medical masks on their number plates, thereby trying to dodge responsibility. By law, car owners may be fined or disqualified only if they hid their number plates and started motion.
Besides, the city authorities decided to resume the work of tow trucks to remove improperly parked cars. The law on tow trucks was adopted at the beginning of the year. Opening of a single dispatcher centre is planned which will process the orders coming from police officers, and inform owners about the time and the place of detainment of their cars and of their storage place. However, the work of tow trucks may often cause traffic jams rather than help get rid of them. Besides, the past experience showed that the work of tow trucks could not affect the amounts of wrongly parked cars. Bearing in mind the growing population of Krasnodar, the problem may turn into a radical issue quite soon. It is clear that the measures taken to deal with it so far cannot be called sufficient.
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