Public transport lanes could be delimited on a number of streets in Chisinau so as to ease road traffic. There are now such lanes only on the streets Vasile Alecsandri and Bucuresti. The suggestion is to extend such a practice, especially on three-lane streets. This and other solutions were debated in a roundtable meeting on February 8, IPN reports.

“The dedicated lanes will help increase passenger flow and the travelling speed of public transport,” said software programmer Andrei Tudos. The participants in discussions said noted such a practice does not entail large financial resources as the necessary road signs exist.

The illegal parking on sidewalks is a problem that needs to be dealt with. As patrol inspectors do not cope with the large number of violations, a public portal could be created for everyone to post pictures of cars parked in banned places. “The people could take photos of illegally parked cars and publish them on a portal for the police to penalize these drivers,” said pensioner Alexandru Castravet.

The participants also considered possibilities of building pay multistory car parks in the central part of the city and in yards of apartment buildings. “Those who build apartments should also allot areas for parking. If there are 100 apartments, there should be 100 parking places and also at least ten places for bicycles. This way cars will not be parked everyone, including on sidewalks and in front of kindergartens,” stated Vasile Fotescu, of the Amateur Cyclists Club.

There could be also introduced systems for paying in advance (monthly) for urban parking spaces, with different loyalty programs. At night, the cars could be parked free of charge, while during the day for money. This will help reduce the number of cars and will ease traffic. Also, the amounts collated into the municipal budget will increase.

Among other proposed solutions are placing informative panels, outfitting the public transport stations with Wi-Fi networks and cell phones chargers, lighting stations at night, adjusting curbs at stations so that mothers with baby carriages and persons in wheelchairs could also have access to these. All these things can motivate the citizens to choose public transport and road traffic in the city will be thus fluidized.

The debated proposals will be submitted to municipal councilors for being included in a road traffic easing plan.