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URBAN TRANSPORT TPT456

INTRODUCTION Traffic management is the measures designed to improve the local environment and safety, through reducing accidents, injuries, congestion and pollution, achieved by slowing traffic speeds or redirecting traffic to more suitable transport routes through various means. It is a very important measure in order to improve the transportation problems especially in the urban areas. One of the instruments of traffic management is parking management. As we all know, parking is an essential component of the transportation system. Vehicles must park at every destination. A typical automobile is parked 23 hours each day, and uses several parking spaces each week. Opportunities for employment, shopping, dining, and other services generate demand for parking. If access is not convenient, frustration among customers, visitors, and employees can jeopardize the sustainability of the downtown core, while suburban shopping centers and office complexes compete with free and plentiful on-site parking. That is why parking management is very essential in our everyday life. It is to ensure that the flow of the traffic are going smooth, especially in the cities area. Parking management refers to various policies and programs that result in more efficient use of parking resources. Parking management also includes a variety of strategies that encourage more efficient use of existing parking facilities, improve the quality of service provided to parking facility users and improve parking facility design. Parking management can help address a wide range of transportation problems and help achieve a variety of transportation, land use development, economic, and environmental objectives.

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URBAN TRANSPORT TPT456

IMPORTANCE OF PARKING MANAGEMENT As mentioned before, parking management refers to policies and programs that result in more efficient use of parking resources. Parking management includes several specific strategies. Appropriate applied parking management can significantly reduce the number of parking spaces required in a particular situation, providing a variety of economic, social and environmental benefits. When all impacts are considered, improved management is often the best solution to parking problems. There are several reasons or benefits that highlight the importance of parking management. First of all, parking management can help to reduce cost. It reduces costs for governments, businesses, developers and even consumers. The cost is not limited only in terms of financial. It may be varied in many ways. It can either be in terms of providing facilities, land consumption, pollutions and many more. Usually, people will assume that there is a limited parking space because the facilities provided is not enough and thus they will be planning to build more buildings for parking spaces. This will tend to cost more for the government in order to provide more facilities of the parking spaces. This shows that there is no proper parking management. When talking about parking management, the first thing that should be considered is not about providing more spaces by building new buildings. The thing that should be first considered is why the available facilities are used inefficiently and how it should be better managed. That way,not only it can save cost financially, it can also reduce land consumption. When land consumption is reduced, it indirectly helps to preserve greenspace and other valuable ecological, historic and cultural resources.

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URBAN TRANSPORT TPT456

An example of a state that uses parking management as their practices is Chicago Parking Management, Inc. which is located in the United States of America. For this company, in terms of parking lot management, no lot is too great or too small. Not only that, they also takes pride in running a "tight-ship". Proper lot maintenance is guided by daily check-list. Their understanding is that, if they don't look good, the customers don't look good, and that's why they strive to make all of their customers look great. The picture below shows how the company reduces land consumption by building a multi level parking . The company did not built a parking lot based on its width, but based on its height.

The next reason which highlights the benefits of using parking management is improving road safety. As we all know, parking management strategies will result in more efficient use of parking resources. When there is more efficient use of parking resources, the lower of chances it will be for parking violation to happen. Thus, it will help to improve the road safety that was caused by parking violation such as double parking.

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URBAN TRANSPORT TPT456

Parking violation such as double parking will threaten the road safety because when there is double parking, the road used by drivers will be narrower. When the road becomes narrower, it is hard for the drivers to drive,especially when there is congestion, and that will result in accidents. An example of a country that have these kind of problem is Indonesia. There are too many parking voalation in that country which causes accidents to occur almost everyday, especially in Jakarta and Bandung. Because there is no proper parking management there, people in Indonesia parked their vehicles almost everywhere that they think is available, eventhough it can threaten the road safety there. The picture below shows the situation of road safety in Indonesia. When there is parking violation, the road will be narrower and thus congestions and accidents can occur.

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URBAN TRANSPORT TPT456

PROBLEMS FACED It is a known fact that almost every major cities in the world are experiencing a shortage of parking spaces in the central planning area. If this shortage is unchecked and unsolved, it will definitely affect the flow of business in that area and thus it will lead to an eventual loss of revenue base for the city. That is why parking management is very much needed especially in the major city area. Eventhough parking management is very important in these city areas, there are also certain problem that can arise from it. Not everybody notice that eventhough parking management will bring positive outcome, there are also some negative outcomes arises from it. One of the problem faced is the fast growing of car ownership and usage. As we all know, parking management aims to encourage more efficient use of existing parking facilities, improve the quality of service provided to parking facility users and improve parking facility design. It does help to improve parking situation but indirectly it also encourage private ownership. This happened because when the parking situation is in better state, people who usually uses the public transportation to escape from congestion and limited parking spaces will feel that it will be easier and more comfortable to ride their own vehicles now since there is more parking spaces. But if everyone is thinking the same thing, the congestion will still happen and thus the parking spaces will still not be enough. When the congestion problem is still increasing, other problems like pollutions will also keep increasing. Although it is mentioned before that the United States of America helps to improve the parking situation in their country by applying the parking management strategies, but the congestion problems there is still increasing. This usually happens because the parking management strategies is not properly managed.

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URBAN TRANSPORT TPT456

The picture below shows the congestion situations in Los Angeles, United State of America. Study have shown that Los Angeles is the nations worst congestion.

That is why a good and well thought parking management is very important in order to solve the parking and traffic problems. The parking management must not only solves the present problems but it must also solve the expected future problems. In order to that, we must not only rely on a specific parkiing management strategy like increasing the capacity of existing parking facilities or making efficient use of an existing parking place. We can also adopt other parking management strategies like parking pricing and parking maximums, in order to solve all the parking and traffic problems. All these parking management strategies must be compatible to one another.

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URBAN TRANSPORT TPT456

CONCLUSION As mentioned earlier, parking management refers to how public parking is controlled through prices, time limits, and other regulations. There are always questions arises about why do we manage parking. The number one reason is to create turnover of spaces, meaning people leave the spaces after a while so that someone else may use them. If there were always spaces available when and where people needed them, then parking management wouldnt be necessary. In compact cities situations where there is competition for space, management is needed. A secondary reason that parking is managed is to generate revenue to operate parking facilities and perhaps to fund other programs as well.

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