Rescuing a Troubled Parking System
Indjija, a municipality located in northern Serbia, has long suffered from critical parking problems. In the city's downtown area, the few available public lots were filled with long-term and residential vehicles, forcing short-term visitors to park illegally, obstruct traffic, and endanger pedestrians by parking on sidewalks. In April 2001, the municipality made an attempt to address these challenges by charging for parking in the downtown area. However, after two years, parking problems persisted.
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| A public billboard advertising Indjija's new pay-by-phone parking system |
Through the USAID-funded Serbia Local Government Reform Program (SLGRP), Indjija implemented an innovative accountability system named System48 (modeled after the CitiStat system used in Baltimore, Maryland). CitiStat is a system designed to improve local government service delivery through the establishment of performance indicators, the systematic collection and analysis of data, and improvements in city/public utility communications. System48 showed Indjija's municipal officials significant inefficiencies in their current parking-payment system.
Officials commissioned a feasibility study to examine the impact of using a parking system similar to one recently implemented in Belgrade, which allows customers to pay for term parking space using their mobile phones. The municipality concurred with the study's recommendation that such a system would be effective in addressing parking problems.
The new system was activated in March 2005. Indjija invested approximately $42,000 in the new system. Compared to the municipality's first system, which only yielded Indjija around $11,000 over two years, the new system averaged approximately $6600 per month. Within roughly six months, the system had paid for itself and began generating real revenue for the municipality.
Not only is the new term parking payment system showing a solid return on investment -
it has also made inroads to solving Indjija's parking problems. The municipality dedicates 50 percent of revenue generated by the system to maintenance and expansion of the parking infrastructure, resulting in better service and greater capacity. The municipality has won much praise from business owners, who are happy that their customers have an easier time reaching them, and from citizens, who find the additional capacity and ease of use helpful.
By helping Indjija's municipal officials replace an inefficient and ineffective parking system, the USAID-funded SLGRP has registered a positive impact on the municipality's quality of life.
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