The political scientist and urban planner Mario Villalba commented that the paid parking project, being outsourced, will not meet the objective of reducing the use of private cars and promoting public transport that is also efficient.
“If a municipal government implements paid parking, and manages it from the same Municipality, in a transparent manner; with technology, with accountability, and if your focus is not to collect but to reduce the incentive for more cars to come, then the logic is different. But if you put a company your vision will be to collect; the more cars are parked and for a longer time, the better for the company”, expressed the Paraguayan professional, university professor in Public Policy and Leadership at the University of The Hague and doctoral researcher in Urban Governance and Development at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Countries Low.
The consortium, he explained, will always be encouraging to increase the number of vehicles with marketing strategies, exchanges with companies, promotions and others.
“Outsourcing would only be when the public sector cannot do it, when there is no experience. In this case, the Municipality has a lot of officials and it is something as simple as charging people who park,” he remarked.
The implementation of controlled and paid parking, in charge of the Parxin consortium in Asunción, is currently suspended after suspicions of irregularities and the pause would be until the audits last.
Since the award, at the end of 2015, the process was questioned because it is an outsourced service and with a high profit margin that the company will keep (65%) for exploiting the public space.
Efficient transportation. For the urban planner it is key to have comprehensive public policies and not isolated measures. First, he pointed out, mobility alternatives must be offered, such as expanding the number of bike paths and providing security to those spaces, working to make public transport efficient, managing night and tourist buses. And only there, he considered, can paid parking be implemented, already as a third step.
For Villalba, offering alternative and sustainable means of transportation is a matter of will.
“The Metrobús project is not advancing, but when it is desired, a million-dollar bridge is built to cross Chaco’i,” he asserted.
Designed as it is, the parking project said that it will obviously generate the rejection of civil society, merchants, cultural promoters, and people who seek to revitalize the Historic Center, given that there are no other transportation alternatives.
“In addition to the fact that there is no security in the Historic Center of Asunción, there is no cultural management, of the integral territory, the merchants consider that something else is added so that the client does not want to go,” considered the political scientist and urban planner.
