Parking and musical chairs

Misinformed people like Peter Xuereb, who wrote to comment about the Pietà local council's time-controlled parking scheme (June 2), infuriate me because they really do not know what they are talking about.

Let me clarify some points at the outset. I live in Naxxar and work in Pietà. For the past nine years I have driven from Naxxar to Pietà and back, five and sometimes six days a week, 52 weeks a year and every day experience traffic jams, diversions, potholed roads, road rage and all the other frustrations that plague motorists.

My office is located in one of the most densely populated areas in Pietà, in a street which has 31 garages and only 15 parking spaces. My vehicle is not registered in Pietà, so like all other non-residents I do not qualify to park in the time-controlled parking bays, even though I spend an average of eight hours a day in the locality. I am lucky that residents of the street know me and allow me to park outside their garages and I play musical chairs when a parking space is vacated.

Pietà is a small locality (0.358 square kilometres excluding St Luke's Hospital), with a population of around 4,300. There are 2,188 vehicles registered in Pietà i.e. 1.9 vehicles per capita, 1,640 parking spaces, 58 reserved parking spaces and 771 garages. In fact, all things being equal, Pietà has a surplus of 223 parking spaces.

However, and this is something that few people bother to consider, St Luke's Hospital employs some 3,200 staff on a shift basis and attracts around 3,000 visitors per day. Pietà also houses the Detox Centre with 700 clients daily, Karen Grech Hospital, the CCU, the Medical School, St. Augustine's College, Hookham Frere Primary School, the Public Broadcasting Services, the PN Headquarters/TV and radio station, a large branch of the Bank of Valletta, Agenzjia Appogg, a firm of accountants with over 160 employees, a number of car dealers, a yacht marina and a burgeoning business community. In addition to this, most of the employees and clients of the Malta Transport Authority, the Gozo Channel Co. and the Joint Office Park in Sa Maison.

According to surveys commissioned by the council, this means that between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. there are an average of 1,800 vehicles circulating within the locality, looking for that elusive parking space. A recent traffic count shows that 300 vehicles per hour cross St Luke's Road at the junction from Pietru Xuereb Street during peak periods, and that's a lot of vehicles for such a small area.

What chance do residents of Pietà have to find a parking space within a two or three block radius of their residence? The chance of a snowball in hell! Which is why the council decided to give residents a fighting chance to find parking close to their homes.

Time-controlled parking schemes were introduced on an experimental basis in Gozo in 2002. Similar schemes were gradually introduced in other localities that attract heavy traffic over the past three years and if people bothered to look around before shooting their mouths off, they would realise that there are localities in which entire stretches of roads are subject to time-controlled parking.

The Pietà council, ever conscious of its civic responsibilities, went about it in another way. There are 71 zones in Pietà available for on-street parking. The council identified 42 (59 per cent) of these zones and allocated pockets of between four to six parking spaces in each zone for time-controlled parking - 243 spaces out of 1,640 (14.8 per cent). Less than 30 of these spaces are within a three-block radius of St Luke's Hospital. As a matter of fact there are only nine time-controlled parking spaces in the entire length of St Luke's Road, so hospital visitors really have no cause to complain.

I honestly cannot understand what all the fuss is about. The council has not in any way reduced the number of parking bays available. It has simply regulated the use thereof. Logic dictates that if the time-controlled parking bays are utilised for the purpose for which they were designed - short-term parking and residents' parking - other parking spaces will be freed for normal parking and motorists will have to play musical chairs to find parking, like they've always done in every car infested street in these islands.