Malls in a jam

While parking woes upset shoppers, developers say much thought goes into traffic and carpark design

Many Singaporeans are all too happy to join a queue, be it for food, flats or freebies.

One queue they unanimously hate, though, is the ubiquitous one waiting to enter or exit the carpark of popular malls.

The latest shopping centre to suffer from traffic problems is Ion Orchard, which opened two weeks ago.

The first couple of days, motorists griped about the nightmare of getting in and out of its multi-storey carpark.

Some motorists had to wait up to 30 minutes to enter.

The situation compounds the gridlock along Orchard Turn, which serves Ion Orchard, Wisma Atria as well as Ngee Ann City.

It does not help that taxis exiting Ion Orchard into Orchard Turn have to contend with incoming traffic from the side of Wisma Atria on the left as well as motorists entering from Orchard Boulevard on the right, creating a bottleneck.

The situation is made worse by motorists exiting Ion Orchard's carpark into Orchard Turn.

Ion Orchard is not the only new mall to experience motoring woes.

When suburban shopping centre Tampines 1 opened in April, shoppers complained about having to wait 45 minutes before they could park their cars because there were not enough carpark lots - the mall has only 203 lots.

Frustrated shopper Leanne Wee, 26, who drives, says: 'It appears that malls don't give much thought to parking and traffic problems.'

Indeed, when it comes to designing a shopping mall, it appears as if carparks and their accessibility are an afterthought.

Architect John Ting, a former president of the Singapore Institute of Architects, says that retail space and the flow of the internal space in the mall is usually a primary concern.

'Carparks are usually the last thing to consider and only because mall developers are required by the authorities to include them,' he says.

But mall developers and their architects say this is not so.

Mr Simon Chua, divisional director at Benoy, the architectural firm that designed Ion Orchard, says: 'Traffic and circulation are key factors in retail planning.'

Benoy's director, Mr David Buffonge, the architect who led the design team for Ion Orchard, says that when planning a carpark 'it is important to always think of the customer'.

He adds that ensuring that the carpark is easy to find, has simple colour coding, clear sight lines and good visibility to the lift and escalator lobbies were some of the things that the firm considered in its design for Ion Orchard's carpark.

Mr Chua points out that the Ion Orchard site was a challenge as Orchard MRT station is underneath it and 'only Orchard Boulevard was best for carparking access and the Orchard Road side was for pedestrians'.

Such long carpark queues are found not only at new malls. Even older ones such as Ngee Ann City, VivoCity and Plaza Singapura are plagued by them.

Freelance public relations consultant May Gwee, 38, who goes to Ngee Ann City at least once a month, has been caught in many a jam there.

Suburban malls are not spared the problem, either.

Housewife Lynn Lee, 38, was once stuck in the carpark of IMM in Jurong East for 30 minutes. When the cars on the way out had filled up the exit ramp all the way down and out of the building, others like hers that were just entering the carpark ended up joining the exit queue.

'There were just too many cars, beyond the capacity of the carpark,' she says. IMM has 1,313 lots.
VivoCity's general manager, Mr Chang Yeng Cheong, says one of the key considerations when planning the mall was the carpark design and servicing points.

'It was definitely not an afterthought as we view the carpark as an integral part of the overall mall experience when shopping at VivoCity,' he says.

Art of carpark planning

He adds that because there is only one main road, Telok Blangah Road, serving the area, the mall had initially planned for three entrances and exits into and out of the mall, at Telok Blangah Road, HarbourFront Walk and Sentosa Gateway.

The Sentosa Gateway carpark entrance has since been closed as the area was acquired by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to facilitate the road expansion works along Sentosa Gateway and Gateway Avenue.

Mr Chang says that the mall also had to consider other external restrictions such as the bus bay, maintaining safe distances from traffic junctions and traffic contributed by the Cruise Centre nearby. 'To achieve better traffic flow, we separated the carpark entry and exit points from those of the taxi and servicing,' he says.

LTA says it works closely with malls on traffic situations even before they are built. During the planning stage of a development, it works with each developer to ensure that the traffic needs of both the development users and the surrounding users are catered for.

These include assessing the traffic impact of the development on the surroundings and its arrangement of access points, pick-up/drop-off bays or driveways for cars and taxis, says an LTA spokesman.

Where necessary, the developers will also be required to bear the cost of making improvements to and widening the roads and junctions surrounding the mall.

LTA continues to monitor the traffic situation when the development is completed. Should the need arise, the spokesman adds, 'LTA works with the traffic police and the building management to implement improvement measures to smoothen out localised issues, such as long queues outside carparks'.

Malls are also doing their bit to ease carpark jams, even if they are done only on an ad-hoc basis and are not long-term solutions. For instance, during peak periods, Ion Orchard and Plaza Singapura deploy traffic controllers.

Mr Chang says VivoCity has been 'actively monitoring the situation and has been working with LTA on several ongoing project works to improve the road and traffic conditions along Telok Blangah Road and Sentosa Gateway'.

The mall gets especially congested on weekends. While a queue of cars along Telok Blangah Road wait to enter the carpark, taxis entering the mall and buses stopping at bus-stops along the same road make the situation worse.

Mr Chang adds that the mall will have a 'parking guidance system' before year-end. Electronic boards will indicate real-time information on parking spaces available in the various carparks within the HarbourFront Precinct, including VivoCity, HarbourFront Centre, Sentosa and Resorts World.

'This will help to reduce circulating traffic and facilitate drivers in finding available carpark lots more efficiently,' he says.

Another popular mall with parking woes is the 25-year-old Parkway Parade. Ms Michelle Lee, marketing and communications manager of Lend Lease, which manages the mall, says that as Parkway Parade is the oldest suburban shopping mall, it faces constraints on improving the old design.

'We provide a shuttle service to and from nearby MRT stations not only to ease the traffic flow but also to encourage visitors to utilise public transport to the centre,' she says.

Despite what malls do to cater to their shoppers' driving needs and the best efforts of LTA and architects, at least one shopper is not convinced they are enough. 'There will still be a jam especially during the festive period,' says housewife Tan Yi Ling, 45. She now takes public transport when she goes shopping.

Source: Straits Times, 1 Aug 2009