Harare's Parking Problems: A Case Study For Acute Parking Shortages In The CBD

Harare's CBD is a densely populated area and the road network system is failing to cope with the increase in number of vehicles which is directly related to parking.According to the statistics released by the Harare city council,the city only has 7 000 on and off-street parkade parking bays against almost 160 000 cars that enter the city each day.?Dhedheya,2019?^[1].This thesis examines the acute parking shortages being faced in the CBD and assesses the current supply,demand and alternative solutions to these problems.The rapid increase in car ownership and the contradiction between parking supply and demand affects many cities in the world including Harare.This imbalance is mainly due to ineffective planning and miscalculations of space requirements and use during the first stages of planning.Parking space shortages have become very problematic in Harare therefore two parking surveys were carried for collecting the data on parking problems.Firstly,the parking interview survey was carried out to check the parking user's origin,destination and the age demographic demand for parking against the supply.Secondly,the license plate in and out survey was carried out.This method was chosen because it gives the most accurate results and realistic data.In this case of a survey,every parking stall was monitored at a continuous interval of 5 minutes within per hour and the license plate numbers noted down.This method helped us to find the average occupancy,average turnover,accumulation,parking capacity and efficiency of the parking lots.Analysis shows that peak demand for parking is very high with an average turnover of one free parking space per hour and the average occupation rate is above 95%for the four streets on weekdays.An observation was made where some cars would park illegally in the traveling lanes.This pattern was especially noticed on Kwame Nkrumah,Samora Machel and Park Street.The average occupation rate was above 90%on Saturday as it is a business day,while the occupancy rate for Sundays was relatively low.The trend noted on Sundays was due to low business activities hence a low traffic influx in to the CBD.There is very limited research on the parking shortages in Harare and Zimbabwe as a whole.The study clearly reviewed the parking shortage patterns in the CBD.Alternative solutions and recommendations were offered for the future development of parking in Zimbabwe by using technology to help ease the parking shortages by using models from other nations like China,Ethiopia and South Africa.The thesis will also help and encourage further investigation by other researchers and scholars in urban planning.The study concludes that the best way to eliminate parking space problems and the congestion that results thereof,modern smart parking solutions are ideal and constant review of the policies essential.