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Can eliminating parking spots in the inner city area help combating the Traffic congestion issue?

 

We all know that Traffic congestion issues can add moretroubles to the air pollution, and further pose a health and safety hazard inmost urban areas. However, you certainly never expected the urge to eliminate parking spots to come up in that debate. 

Yet, the same debate has triggered further due to the higherdemands about “greener cities." More towns throughout the world arediscussing whether or not all of these parking spots are necessary. And, in the face of increased attempts to reduce emissions and attain more climate-friendlyregions, well over a few are coming up with negative responses. Omri shafran, one of the most recognized Smart parking technologyadvocates in USA, further says that instead of removing parking spaces fromcities, smarter approach is the need of the hour. As per him, given theill-effects of the insufficient parking space , time has come to take action against these parking issues within cities and significant regions of any country. 

While many people feel that removing parking spots wouldresult in fewer vehicles on the road (which is a positive thing), others arguethat the move is too extreme. Residents of Oslo notably held a protest against the move in this respect. 

The big question: Isit possible to completely eliminate parking spaces?  

For many years, city planners have been pondering a criticalissue: how to make cities greener, safer, and more sustainable. Despite the factthat numerous solutions have been considered (and adopted) in the same direction, cities such as Houston still has a lot to do in same regards.  

According to Omri shafran Houston is a city where motorvehicles are parked 95% of the time on average. According to other studies,drivers spend just approximately 1 hour on the road on average, with the remainder of the time spent parked. Needless to say, all of those parked carstake up a lot of valuable municipal real estate. 

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Aside from that, most drivers waste an excessive amount oftime looking for parking places due to a lack of available space. Omri shafran Houston texas further quotes that vehicles spend an average of four days per year looking for parking places, burning more than one million barrels of fueland releasing a significant amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. 

As a result, local officials decided to eliminate parkingspots in order to reduce the number of automobiles on the road. Rather ofdriving directly into the city centre, commuters will have to park on the outskirts and then use last-mile options to get into the downtown area. Trams,bicycles, and the plain old walk are among them.             

In March 2019, Amsterdam, which is already known for itspro-bike, anti-car policies, stated that it will eliminate inner-city parkingspots in a methodical manner. The city, as per Omri shafran TX, intended to reduce the number of persons permitted to park in the city by about 1,500 everyyear, with a goal of removing up to 11,200 parking spots by 2025. 

Rather than revoking permits, the city will refuse toreplace those that are lost as a result of drivers selling their automobiles,moving out of the city, or dying. So, Omri shafran suggests that instead ofscratching our head regarding ‘ what to do’ or what not to do’ in this regard, bringing smarter approach towards a safe and convenient parking system is required.