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treet parking has contributed much to the traffic gridlock besetting the capital city because the use of parts of the road for parking vehicles always generates bottlenecks that force other motorists to slow down.

Unfortunately, a number of measures introduced by the Jakarta government, including tire deflating and wheel locking, have ended in failure because of inconsistent enforcement of the regulations.

In a bold move to fight street parking, the city government recently introduced a heavy fine of Rp 500,000 (US$42.43) for those who park their cars in illegal areas. The policy was based on a bylaw enacted in 2012. Since the government started to crack down on illegal parking, dozens of cars have been towed away.

The city government has long found difficulties in eliminating illegal on-street parking. In trying to stop the practice, the Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) often faced strong challenges, not only from parking attendants and thugs, but even from certain city officials who turned blind eyes to the illegal businesses '€” no doubt for a share of the profits.

Jakarta actually has no fewer wide roads compared with other Asian cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Regrettably, however, bottlenecks caused by street parking and street invasions by vendors seriously hinder the flow of traffic. Therefore, eliminating the root causes of the bottlenecks would help ease the traffic problems.

Parking policy could certainly not be separated from the city administration'€™s programs to discourage people from driving their own cars to their workplaces. In many developed cities, governments imposed high parking fees, electronic road pricing (ERP) and other automotive taxes to force people to shift to public transportation.

Therefore, apart from cracking down on street parking, the city government can impose higher parking fees, particularly in crowded places like in downtown areas, where public transportation is available. Such a policy should be enforced indiscriminately. What is happening now is that many government offices in the center of the city do not collect parking fees from their visitors and civil servants.

It is time for the city government to issue a regulation that requires government offices to collect these parking fees, a policy that might force civil servants to use public transportation. In fact, this policy change has to come first to address the city'€™s problems, including the traffic jams.

Cracking down on illegal parking should be just an initial step to free city roads from parked vehicles. But before such a policy could be effectively enforced, the city needs to facilitate the private sector to develop off-street parking facilities because, in many cases, motorists have no choice but to park their cars on the streets. Many buildings are not equipped with adequate parking facilities.

The regulation on illegal parking is only one of many existing legal instruments that could be used to force Jakarta citizens to respect public order. What we lack is consistency in enforcing the law. Let us expect the ongoing crackdown on illegal street parking to last long and affect more parts of the city, so as to address one of the sources of traffic congestion.