The law provides for payment for parking, but does not normalize the number of parking spaces

The number of passenger cars in Azerbaijan is growing every year. In January-November 2023, according to state statistics, 88,151 vehicles for transporting people were imported into the country, by 28.3% more than the same period in 2022.

Having bought a car, Baku residents are faced with the problem of a shortage of parking spaces. There is a difference between the concepts of "parking lot/place" - a place on a lot or multilevel that charges money to park; and a parking spot/space - a designated area paved or not that is set aside for cars.

Residents of Baku living in the city limits should be able to store their personal cars in designated or specially built parking spaces.  Roadsides and even sidewalks in some places of the historical part of Baku are clogged with cars both during the day and at night. There are no places for temporary parking in the central areas, and paid underground and aboveground parking lots are clogged with cars in the morning.

Architect Elchin Aliyev investigated this problem when he was looking for a parking space for his car. After questioning the parking workers, he learned that they do not guarantee the safety of the cars entrusted to them and do not intend to compensate the owners for the cost of fixing dents and scratches found by the owners after storing cars in parking lots.

And how are things in the areas of new buildings?  In 2010, the State Committee for Urban Construction and Architecture adopted the AzDTN 2.7-1 norm, according to which construction companies are required to provide parking spaces for residents of houses.  Everything is described in the norms (the size of each parking lot, the distance between them, fire extinguishing, number of floors, wall materials ...), but there is no indication of the minimum number of parking spaces depending on the number of residents in the house.  The document was copied from the Interstate Building Codes adopted in Moscow for the CIS countries and put into use in Azerbaijan on 01.11.2002 by order of the State Committee for Construction and Architecture.

As a result of such a half-hearted document, construction companies do not violate the law if, after selling apartments to two hundred families, they built a parking lot for twenty cars near the building. Formally, the law has been observed, there is Parking, but where should the rest of the residents put their cars? They park along highways, making it difficult to move.

Associate professor at the Azerbaijan Technical University, transport expert Farhad Eyyubov believes that the organization of parking in Baku is not very effective: "Parking spaces should not impede the movement of vehicles on the rest of the road. If the number of lanes on the road is at least three, one of them can be allocated for parking. However, with only two lanes, parking arrangements are inappropriate."

Arzu Suleymanov, an expert in the field of transport, advises using the European experience, where the concept of "shared street" is applied: "According to this concept, streets are a priority for pedestrians, and in one-way traffic parking spaces are allocated for a small number of cars, mainly for people with disabilities and the elderly. The presence of a hospital nearby is considered. Although our streets are wider than European ones, sometimes traffic problems arise due to incorrect analysis."

The shortage of parking spaces and, as a result, the necessity of storing cars at the edge of the roads is used by the Land Transport Agency, which has appropriated most of the roadsides. The agency recently announced the "creation of 17 thousand new parking spaces in Baku."  There is no parking norm, but the government adopted a resolution dated June 25, 2023 "On the amount of parking fees for vehicles."  Baku was divided into five zones with different rates per hour of parking (free places and from 30 gepik to 1 manat per hour.)

If you copy Russian laws, then it would be more correct to apply SNiP 21-02-99 "Parking lots" in Azerbaijan. According to the norms of the Russian Federation, developers must necessarily provide parking lots of any type in the project of a residential complex that would cover the residents' need for parking.

In 2011, Russia adopted a unified classification of new buildings (EC MZHN), according to which they are divided by consumer class into "economy", "comfort", "business" and "elite".  Regarding parking lots, the document requires the creation of about 20 parking spaces for every 100 apartments – in economy class; about 60 parking spaces for every 100 apartments - in comfort class; 1-2 parking spaces for each apartment – in business and elite class.

There is no similar legislative Act in Azerbaijan, so construction companies act at their discretion and conscience. Everyone has a different one. Architect Sohrab Rahimov writes that his own research has identified 70 parking lots for every hundred apartments for budget residential buildings, and one parking lot for each apartment in business class houses.