A modern problem

The saying, 'water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.' can be applied to a modern problem, albeit with a few changes. The new version of these poetic lines should be 'cars, cars everywhere, but not a spot to park'.

The problem seems to be far worse than I had ever realised, as during a couple of unusually business-like morning meetings a week or so back, I had the seemingly simple task of visiting two places in one day that both required parking in a busy business district.

The first took me approximately twenty minutes to get there and then a further hour to find a parking space. The second meeting went slightly smoother with the hunt for an empty bay 'only' taking forty-five minutes!

Now, I don't have to do that very often, and in fact I'll be avoiding it with passion in the future, but many poor souls have to do this ridiculous car dance everyday.

The problem is simple. In the past there wasn't any need to provide parking. Between each office building there was a patch of sand for everyone to use. Perhaps not the ideal scenario, but it did the job in a messy kind of way.

Now, those spaces are being filled with guess what? More office buildings! So now more people need to park in a decreasing number of spaces. It's happening all over Dubai and is even starting to effect residential areas.

Now I hate maths with a passion, but it's a very simple calculation. Take a thirty-storey building, with say four offices on each floor. Each office will hold around eight to ten people. At its lowest estimate, that's nearly a thousand people that need to park their cars for each new building that opens.

But that figure then needs to be added to the people from the other buildings that now cannot park on the sand the new building occupies.

It's a self-feeding monster of a problem that will result in the congested areas being brought to a complete standstill.

So far the municipality's answer has been to put up parking meters on what bays there are, cashing in on the spiraling problem.

Now, before you all start writing in and ranting that London, New York and Tokyo also don't have any inner-city parking, you have to bear in mind that those cities have a proper public transport system, which allows you to get to within a quick walk of your destination without the need of a car.

Yes, Dubai will have the Metro, but it won't be open for another year or so, and will then need time to expand. Also, there won't be much in the way of parking at each of the stations.

So all you'll have is a load of commuters stuck outside the station waiting for cabs every day.

So what's the solution? In the short term, nothing. Buy a motorbike? Buy a helicopter? Live in your office? You could force people to car share, but it's not ideal - and a legal grey area in the region.

Fascinating automated parking systems from Japan might help, but they're expensive and will only take a hundred cars or so out of the equation. And imagine the wait to get your car back at home time!

The chance to build car parks has been missed. There just isn't room for those anymore. The landowners certainly won't build car parks on their valuable land when they can throw up a high-rise instead.

They want to cash in as well and grab a slice of that valuable office rental market, and I can't blame them. Why should they solve the problems created by someone else?

The simple fact is that once companies start to lose business because no-one can get to them for meetings and their staff are always late, those companies will start to relocate to out-of-town business parks.

But, maybe that's what the government wants. Something needs to keep the development momentum going and this is another small part in an incredibly complex chain. If I can see the problem, I'm sure the powers that be do too.

I work from home, so if anyone wants to rent a parking space on my driveway, I'm open to offers. I'm not sure how you'll get to the office though, my chopper's out of gas!

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