City Hall should introduce a Sh60 hourly parking fee in the CBD to increase revenue, a report suggests.
The Parking Management Report, released by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy last week, shows the county loses millions of shillings in revenue every year because of the ‘fixed’ fees.
It says 19 per cent of all vehicles parked in the CBD do so for eight hours or more and occupy more than a half of all the available parking slots downtown.
This, the report says, denies other motorists spaces to park their cars thus revenue losses to the county government and can only be cured by the introduction of parking pricing.
According to a report released by Auditor General Edward Ouko last week, only a third of all vehicles parked in the city in 2016-17 financial year paid parking fees. This led a Sh300 million loss in revenue.
A total of 1,305, 440 vehicles were parked, of which only 402,401 ( 31 per cent) paid the requisite parking fee of Sh300 per day.
France example
ITDP Africa programme director Christopher Kost said that the county should introduce an hourly fee of Sh60. The fee should be high on streets with high demand including Moi Avenue, Tom Mboya and Kenyatta Avenue.
There are about 6,100 parking spaces in the city centre. Across the county, there are 12,000 slots. The county charges a fixed rate of Sh300 per vehicle per day.
Besides huge revenue losses, the report says the current payment system contributes to traffic gridlock in the capital.
“Cruising for parking contributes to 30 per cent of congested traffic in Nairobi,” Kost said.
The report indicated that on average, a motorist takes 32 minutes searching for parking space in the city centre.
“Thirteen per cent of the respondents has spent over one hour searching for parking slot at at least once in the previous year,” reads the report.
The report said that some 14, 300 parking slots were freed in Paris, France between 2003 and 2007 when the parking pricing system was introduced.
Some 175,000 parking slots were occupied by cars in the streets of Paris in 2003 but this was reduced to 158,000 in 2007.
About 4000 freed spaces were used to make spaces for 1, 451 new velib stations (public cycle sharing system with 20,000 bicycles).
The system reduced traffic gridlock in the city by 68 per cent. Five per cent of the motorists also started cycling to town.