Chisinau motorists agree to pay parking tax in order to avoid jams

The drivers in the municipality of Chisinau say the traffic jams and the poor condition of the roads cause many troubles to them and thus agree to pay taxes for parking their vehicles in front of the offices during the day, says a study conducted by the public associations “Viitorul Verde” and the Chisinau Local Organization of the Ecologist Movement of Moldova. The study was presented at Info-Prim Neo News Agency on Thursday, December 24. According to the authors, the study covered a sample of 400 Chisinau motorists. During the presentation of the study, Vladimir Garaba, the head of the Chisinau Local Organization of the Ecologist Movement of Moldova, said the economic levers represent a solution for solving the problem of unauthorized parking in Chisinau. “More than 100,000 cars or 70% of the total vehicles are parked in unauthorized places every day. We asked the Chisinau administration to institute a workplace parking levy in order to reduce traffic. By calculation, we determined that the motorists would accept a levy of about 2.5 lei an hour,” Garaba said. Another problem raised by the study is the lack of units for collecting and processing used tires and accumulators, which are thrown and become a source of pollution. The study says that only 47% of the drivers wash their cars at car washes. The others wash them in yards or improvised places. “The water from car washes gets to the Byk, polluting it, not speaking about the washing of cars on the bank of the river,” Garaba said. The ecologists also proposed using bicycles in all the districts of Chisinau. Most of the respondents said the cyclists do not cause problems to them. Only some of them said they should be excluded from traffic. A vehicle in Chisinau covers 40 km on average a day. The total vehicles involved in traffic consume about 66,000 liters of fuel daily. The conclusions and recommendations contained in the study will be included in a scheme that will be submitted to the City Hall for formulating the urban transport development program. The study was carried out between October and November 2009 as part of the project “Clean Air for Chisinau Residents”, financed by the State Ecological Inspectorate.