VietNamNet Bridge – The Prime Minister has given the nod to localities wanting to temporarily use sections of pavements and roadways for parking lots until 2023.

Street pavement is used as a parking lot on Dinh Tien Hoang Street, Ha Noi. Streets and roadways with enough capacity for vehicle parking that are not national highways crossing urban areas can now temporarily serve as parking lots.

Under the recently-released Government Decree 100, streets and roadways which have enough capacity for vehicle parking and are not national highways crossing urban areas, will temporarily serve as parking lots from October this year.

The respective streets and roadways must leave at least 1.5m of pavement for pedestrians and enough road space for moving vehicles.

The Ha Noi Transport Department was mapping out streets that would meet regulations to be used as parking lots and will submit findings to the municipal People's Committee for approval, the department's deputy director Nguyen Hoang Linh told Tien Phong (Vanguard) Newspaper.

According to traffic experts, parking demand on streets in the city center has exceeded supply, with the number of vehicles surging in spite of no increases in public parking lots.

A recent report from the department shows that the city has nearly 700 legal parking lots, constituting only 10 per cent of real demand.

On average, the number of cars and motorbikes in the city increases around 17 per cent per year with an 11 per cent surge in the 2010-12 period.

The move follows a ban from municipal authorities a year ago, where vehicles were not permitted on 262 streets in nine districts. Traffic experts later deemed the ban as ineffective.

Illegal parks of vehicles are still rife on banned streets such as Kim Ma, Nguyen Thai Hoc in Ba Dinh District and Hai Ba Trung Street in Hoan Kiem District.

Source: VNS