Wheel's Clamping

The management of the Sarawak Government Hospital or Hospital Umum Sarawak had acted accordingly to overcome the problem of vehicles parked illegally at the hospital's parking lots. It is a well known fact that there are severe shortages of parking spaces at the Sarawak Government Hospital. Most of the parking spaces had to give way for new hospital building to provide more facilities for users. In order to prevent vehicles from blocking other vehicles due to the shortages of parking spaces, the Hospital management had resorted to giving fines for those who parked illegally.

The best ever method to enforce the parking regulation is by using wheel's clamping where users has to pay RM50 ringgit each time they wanted their vehicle to be unclamped. The measure is very effective where there is no more vehicles illegally parked everywhere as before.

Instead of a welcoming message provided at the entrance of the Hospital, those who are in need of medical attentions are forewarned that parking is the utmost important thing to be observed whenever anybody wanted to visit the hospital. Whatever happens after that is secondary, i.e. whether you are being treated on time or not. The first thing that you need to do is to circle several time looking for empty parking spaces around the facility before you headed outside of the hospital to avoid your vehicle from being clamped. However, in case you are dealing with an emergency situation, I don't think Rm50 is really matter to you. In that case please park your vehicle at the nearest location possible and make sure that your vehicle will not block other vehicles because for sure your vehicle will be surely parked there with an additional security measure i.e. wheel clamped.

Due to the wheel clamping measure being enforced at the hospital, a lot of business opportunities available to those land owners near the hospital vicinity. Before the wheel clamping exercise, don't ever think of parking your vehicle on the roadside on other people properties because you will be charged for trespassing. However, nowadays, everybody is welcome to park their vehicles on the specially prepared parking spaces for visitors near the hospital. For the unwary visitors, they will never know the amount of fees that they have to pay for the parking facilities because there is no information available anywhere near the parking facilities. Upon entering the parking lot, you will be stop by parking attendance requesting you to pay RM5. I don't think that you will tell the parking attendance, after spending several hours searching for empty parking spot, that you will not pay the amount because you wanted to find other parking places that is much cheaper. Thus, most likely you will just pay the RM5 and get yourself a decent parking space. With the RM5 charge also, not many vehicles are parked at the facility making it very easy for you to find an empty parking spaces.

Personally, I think the availability of the off street parking spaces really provide relieve to those who wanted find parking space to park their vehicles. The only concern is that the operators of the parking lot must provide enough information regarding the fees of using their facilities. Furthermore, I am not sure whether the operators have been given any approval for carrying out such business on their vicinity.

Read HERE for new offstreet parking.

Read HERE for parking woes.

Read HERE for solving parking problems.

New Offstreet Parking

The current parking shortage at Kuching Government Hospital is a well known phenomenon especially for those who have to visit the hospital frequently and also for those who works at the hospital. If anybody wanted to have a good free parking, one has to go out very early in the morning and find himself or herself a very good free parking spot. Or else, you have to use your trusty 4X4 trucks so that you can park as you wished as shown in the picture above.

If you were to drive your car you will hardly find any empty parking spaces to park your car. With the new off street parking facilities available outside of the hospital, all vehicles that are parked illegally in the hospital parking lot will have the car wheels being clamped by the authority. You will have to pay hefty amount of money to be able to drive your car again. So be careful next time you illegally park your car at the Sarawak Hospital vicinity.

Luckily, there is a new off-street parking lot just the opposite of the hospital entrance. However, there is no sign board indicating the owner of the lot and also there is no information regarding the parking fee that users have to pay. If you are desperate to get a parking space, as that is the case for almost anybody visiting the hospital, you will have to use the new off street parking facility.

The moment you enter the new premise, the attendance of the parking lot will ask you to park your vehicle first and then pay the parking fees to him later. Well the trick seems to work fine for the parking operator. After you have parked your vehicle, the moment you are asking about the parking fee, the parking operator will tell you that the fee is RM5 and he will further convince you that you can reenter the parking lot as many time that you wish for that whole day using the parking coupon. The parking charges is reasonable if you park your vehicle very early in the morning and if you are planning to sleep at the hospital throughout the day. Also, the parking fee is reasonable if you are planning to drive your car around Kuching to find food for lunch and then you return to the parking lot to park your car so that you can continue enjoying your sleep in the hospital for the rest of the day.

However, that is not always the case since most users wanted to park their vehicle only for several hours to catch their appointment with doctors or to pick up some medicines at the pharmacy or to visit some relatives who are admitted in the hospital. It is good to have several short-term parking places where users can park their vehicles for a short period of time and being charged nominally instead of being charged a flat rate. 

The above picture is a parking receipt for using the new off street parking. The rate is RM5 and valid for multiple entries within the same day. However, it is very unclear about the validity period of a day which is not being mentioned in the receipt. There is no indication on the name of company operating the parking system which is likely being subjected to abuse by the operators or somebody else. Regarding the night market as mentioned in the receipt, I don't think it is applicable to the respective off street parking site.

Hopefully, this entry will be of benefit to those who wanted to try out the new off street parking facility every time that they visited the Sarawak Hospital. Unless you want to spend most of your time in the hospital for the whole day, then the RM5 parking rate is quite unreasonable.

Parking Woes

Looking for a parking space in central business district can be such a daunting task. Due to the unavailability of parking spaces, drivers usually have to do the following attempt:

1. Double Park: Vehicle is parked behind the parked vehicles
2. Triple Park: Vehicle is parked besides the double parked vehicle
3. Park at the place where it is illegal to park

All of the above maneuvers will agitate the vehicles that are being blocked and cause fighting and damaging the respective vehicles. As reported in the news, cops in Shah Alam are in all out war on illegal parking. The doubled and tripled parked cars cause fighting among the vehicle owners.

Another article in the news also indicates similar grouses from road users about parking woes.

Why such incidences happen in the first place? The parking woes happened, most of the time, due to inadequate number of available parking spaces.  Due to the trips generated at such places, the number of parking spaces is always an issue causing drivers to circulate endlessly around the area just to find a parking space. Another cause of such incidents is the drivers' behavior. The drivers who do the double or triple parked can be categorized as inconsiderate to others.

I think it is time for the relevant authorities to put an end to all of the parking woes affecting all kind of road users throughout the country.

The picture below is an example of vehicles being parked alongside a stretch of road.




An example of a taxi parked under the no parking signage may be due to the fact that there is just no extra parking space for the driver to park his vehicle.



In case that you cannot find a decent parking space available, you may end up parking your car as in the following picture.




Another way of utilizing the available areas to park your vehicle since there isn't any free parking spaces at the locality.



The following is the usual scene at the famous Gambier Street where vehicles are parked on the road side. Most of the time, the vehicles are double or triple parked.

Expensive Parking

IMG_3789
Originally uploaded by wanhashim

If you one of those who have to drive to work in Kuala Lumpur, most of the time you will have no choice but to park your car at one of the empty lot converted as parking areas. The charge is based on per entry basis and the rate is very demand oriented.

In the above picture, the charge is RM8 per entry. If you parked your car for a day let say 8 hours then the rate is about RM1 an hour given that you did not have any urgent business that force you to drive your vehicle. If you do, then your RM8 is only for a few hours and if you are unlucky you have to re-enter the parking lot and pay another parking ticket.

The charge can be very expensive if you only wanted to park for a short while. For example if you only wanted to do some transaction in a bank, you will have no choice but to pay the expensive parking rate for nothing. I think the operator of the parking lot knew that most of users are so desperate to find a parking place that most of the short term users will have to use their service.

The operator will change the rate based on demand. If the demand is so high, the rate can go up to RM10 per entry (I think they can even go up to RM20 per entry). If the demand is low, the rate can is reduced to RM5 only.

Well, if you have a piece of land in the heart of a city, don't develop the piece of land. But, charge people for using the land. In this case, you can work out the mathematic on the average daily income that they reaped from the users.

Therefore, unless there are efficient and comfortable public transport especially during peak hours, users can park their cars at home and ride the public transport which is much cheaper.

Solving Parking Problems

Expensive ways of solving parking problems is to increase number of parking bays by constructing multilevel car parks structure. In most city center, to allocate vacant areas for parking purposes is very expensive. Due to the dilemma, most agencies will leave it to road users to find their own ways to find their own parking spaces. I recommend you to have your own SUV or 4x4 so that you will have an extra advantage of looking for empty spaces to park your vehicles. Otherwise you have to wait for your turn (if you are lucky enough) to find a suitable parking space.

The owner of this vehicle finds this specific spot to park his vehicle. I have to say sorry to all pedestrian because they have been deprived of their space along the road.



This vehicles are parked on the curb. This is the advantages of four wheel drive because they can climb the curb to park their vehicles. However, the owner of the place has to pay more money to maintain the curb due to its inappropriate use.



Similarly, the four wheels drive has the advantages to find suitable parking spaces.

Real Time Information on Parking

According to The New York Times , San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces using a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment. The wireless sensor is a device that can be glued on the pavement to monitor the presence of vehicle on the parking lot.

According to the report drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car. Thus with the technology, it will be a hassle free to renew your parking charges especially if you are still waiting in a queue.

Hopefully the technology which was introduced by streetline will help in reducing traffic congestion due to slow moving vehicles looking for empty parking spaces.