Cyprus-Forum.com

[Sotos]

DRIVERS who park on pavements, close to corners of roads or traffic lights, or against traffic flow will now face £50 fines, a 333 per cent increase from the former £15 fine.

Traffic police have already begun enforcing the new law, which the Council of Ministers decided upon on December 5.

Not all of the £15 traffic violation fines have been increased to £50. The new £50 fine is applicable to only four cases:

1) Parking on a pavement.

2) Failing to stop before a zebra crossing when pedestrians are waiting to cross
3) Parking against the flow of traffic

and 4) Parking a short distance from the corner of the road, traffic lights, etc.

The Nicosia Municipality is urging the public to use the public parking lots and has made special arrangements for free parking during the holiday season at the old GSP parking lot.

Public parking lots have fixed rates that begin at 75 cents for two hours. A municipal official told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that in no case could the fees at public parking lots be increased unless the municipal council approved a new raise.

Private parking lot owners, however, are not restricted in raising their prices, and with the shopping frenzy that marks the days before Christmas, many private lots, especially off Makarios Avenue, have raised their parking prices from one or two pounds to three pounds.

An attendant at the walled city parking lot on Arsinois and Vassiliou Voulgaroctonou told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that a customer recently said she had parked at a parking lot off Makarios Avenue for only ten minutes but had still been charged three pounds.

“Not only that, but the man who charged her even knew her, because she was in the police force and he was a retired policeman.”

“One pound, maybe even two, I could understand”, he said, “but three pounds? It’s like putting your hand directly into the other person’s pocket.”

The only time that the government can intervene in the pricing of parking lot attendants is when a group of private parking lot owners collude to set prices, much in the same way that the government cannot interfere with the prices that petrol stations charge in Cyprus unless they violate competition laws.

The Voulgaroctonou attendant said that they had not increased their parking fees for the holiday season, which were one pound for two or three hours and two pounds for all-day parking.

He said he hadn’t yet heard about the new law raising the parking fines in certain cases to £50, but said that even at £15 it did not seem worth the risk to park illegally.
“Is it really worth the risk to save a pound or two?” he said. “I’d rather have a clear head.”

Even outside the holiday season, traffic is badly congested in Nicosia, which lacks any public transportation system to accommodate the city needs.

The traffic congestion that results from a lack of adequate public transportation then leads to traffic violations, such as parking on pavements, which then makes life difficult for groups like the disabled, who rely on unobstructed pavements to move about the city.

[Sotos]

I agree with this increase. It drives me nuts when some people stop in the middle of a main road because they have to stop right outside the shop and they can not walk 50 meters!

[Mikros]

I do not agree here... There are too many cars, parking spaces are limited and there is no public transportation system. What the f... are they thinking about?

[Sotos]

Mikros, if people were willing to walk for 50-100 meters the problem would be much less. One example: Sigma bakery next to the Mesa Yitonia round about. Every time I pass by it there are 3-4 cars parked in the road. Yet the Sigma free parking place behind the bakery is empty!