Parking Fees in Bali on the Rise

The city arrangement is one of the important things need to be paid attention from the government. During this time, the arrangement of Singaraja has been done well by the government of Buleleng regency. This is according to Hindu’s system of place arrangement called Tri Hita Karana, in which the area is divided into three; the upper area, middle area and the lower area. It makes the city neat and organized enough. However, there is one problem that may become a serious problem in the future for the city development.

It is the parking system in the town. The increasing number of vehicles in the city will need more area of parking. Motorbikes and cars are passing by on the streets carrying people. Somewhere, they will stop and park their vehicles. Anyar market, in Diponegoro Street is one of the destination places for the road users. In the morning, there are hundreds of motorbikes and cars parking on both of the roadsides.

This sometimes creates a “usually happened” traffic jam especially in the morning, when people come to the market and do their business. It is not a nice view in the morning when motorbikes and cars don’t park in an organized order and it is dangerous because it can cause traffic accidents.

Buleleng government had tried to solve the problems by strictly dividing the parking area for cars and motorbikes. The left side of Diponegoro Street would be used for the parking area of motorbikes and the right side of the street would be used for the parking area of cars. The government also forbade the traders who usually use the right side of the street to display their merchandises.

In the beginning, the citizens obeyed this regulation; they parked their vehicles in the determined location and there were no traders on the roadsides. The government also did some special operations and fined people who parked their vehicles or traded not in the determined place. But then, now we can see that the regulation is not obeyed anymore. Motorbikes are parking in the right side of Diponegoro Street and no government officers try to fix it.

Many of the motorbikes belong to the shopkeepers whose shops are on the right side of Diponegoro Street and also belong the traders. Moreover, in the morning, there are cars parking on the right side of road near the road to Anyar Market causing serious traffic jams.

Another problem of parking system is the parking system in front of Hardy’s, in Ngurah Rai Street. Actually, there is a free parking sign in front of the supermarket. But, the visitors of the supermarket parked their cars in front of the sign. Public had discussed this problem because if the free parking sign had to be obeyed so there shouldn’t be any cars parked in front of the sign, and if the cars could be parked in front of Hardy’s so the government should break the free parking sign.

Then, the government declared that people have to obey the free parking sign. Since then, there were no cars parked in front of Hardy’s. However, this regulation also didn’t stand long. Although the government had put lines in front of Hardy’s but when the visitors in Hardy’s increased such as on Valentine’s Day, the motorbikes riders used the area to park their vehicles since the parking area inside Hardy’s was overloaded.

The security matter in the parking area also becomes a serious problem. There are many theft cases happened in the parking area. The thief usually steals helmet and valuable things kept by the riders under the saddle of their motorbikes. The thief also steals things from the parking cars such as tape and radio. When these happen, the parking officers usually don’t want to hold the responsible and say that it’s none of their business. They are in charged in keeping the parking order and not the theft cases. That’s why most people choose to disobey the free parking sign and park their vehicles close to them where they can keep an eye on the vehicles.

In the year of 2007, Buleleng government decides to raise the parking tariff. The motorbike-parking tariff was Rp. 300 (USD 0.03) and the car-parking tariff was Rp 500 (USD 0.05). Through this new regulation, the parking tariff for motorbike will be Rp 500 (USD 0.05) and for a car it will be Rp 1,000 (USD 0.11). The people’s comments are different but most of them agree with this regulation with some conditions that the government can conduct better security system to the parking vehicles such as giving insurance to the stolen vehicles and the money from the parking tariff won’t be corrupted.

This new parking tariff is not really a burden for the riders because since long time ago the riders had already paid Rp 500 to the parking officers because it was difficult for them to find the change. So the riders just handed Rp 500 notes to the parking officers and went away.