Parking is a commodity that, like most other commodities, is subject to the economic law of supply and demand. A small, densely populated country, which has an economic strategy that seeks further substantial growth, needs to manage the demand for scarce parking spaces more intelligently than it does now.
As the number of cars on the roads continues to rise alarmingly, the task is made that much more difficult by a public transport system which still does not provide an efficient enough alternative for people used to travelling by car, although great improvements have been made in recent years.
The concepts of ride-sharing and micromobility are finally gaining ground but they are still fledgling, hardly enough to make a dent in the demand for private cars and their parking spaces. Meanwhile, the few paid public car parks have not kept up with the growth of the private car stock.
The demand for parking has also increased substantially in many localities because development policies sanction multi-storey residential blocks in narrow streets. The bad urban planning practices of the past few decades cannot be reversed.
And then there are the selfish drivers who persist on parking on the street, despite owning or renting a garage.
Maria Attard, director of the Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development, argues there is a very high cost associated with free, unmanaged parking, primarily because like any free thing, it gets abused.
Introducing parking meters, or other forms of payment, as cities abroad have done for decades, could be a partial solution to the problem of balancing supply and demand.
But Sliema mayor Anthony Chircop said that even the mention of paid parking as an idea would not go down well in his locality, where many are demanding residential parking.
The current situation points to the urgent need for a policy to regulate and manage street parking spaces that already exist.
The bedrock of a well-functioning parking policy would be its alignment with a general transportation-demand management strategy.
The dual aim would be to reduce the dominance of cars in the streets of our congested towns and villages and push more people to consider alternative means of transport.
Those alternatives would include more efficient public transport, shared commuting and micromobility – whether it is in the form of bicycles, scooters or innovative, small electric vehicles.
An island like ours needs to continue exploiting the benefits of sea transport. It is high time we disincentivise the need to own a car, or at least limit it to no more than one car.
What is certain is that this alignment cannot be achieved so long as public transport remains an unthinkable option for most car-owning commuters.
Taxing the car owner to be able to park in the street for hours on end will certainly be an unpopular move but it is fast becoming an unavoidable measure to bring some order to the present free-for-all and often chaotic parking situation. The fees could be ploughed back into community projects – such as the creation of more pedestrianised public spaces in towns and villages – which would benefit us all.
Still, if the fees started low and were gradually increased, they might serve as a catalyst for a culture change in the way scarce public land is treated by owners of private vehicles – as a free commodity which they are entitled to use and abuse.