During a press conference on Monday Cairo Governor Galal Al-Said announced that the four levels of the subterranean Tahrir car park will open by mid-December. A trial run of the car park began on Sunday, during which entry will be restricted to government cars and buses. Al-Said also announced that traffic signs leading to the underground car park will be installed to allow drivers to familiarise themselves with the car park's access points. By mid-December digital signs will have been installed inside the car park to facilitate internal traffic flow. The trial should identify and resolve any teething problems before next month's official inauguration. Restrictions on car parking in the streets surrounding Tahrir Square will only be applied once the car park is open to the public. The capacity of the four-level garage project, said Al-Said, is 2300 cars and 24 buses, and costs have topped LE1 billion, a figure that includes construction and the price of the land. Early reports placed the capacity of the project at 1700 cars and 24 buses. The opening date of the garage has been rescheduled a number of times since the project was first announced in 1997. Construction work was halted on several occasions. In 2009 the Arab Contractors Company was appointed to complete the project only for work to grind to a halt in 2011 because of political instability. Since June 2012 government officials have regularly promised the garage would “open soon”. Groundwater has been cited as a major factor in the delays. Downtown Cairo suffers from severe traffic congestion, much of it caused by double or triple parking blocking the flow of traffic. Next month's official opening of the car park, says Al-Said, will be accompanied by a street clearance campaign. Owners of vehicles parked in feeder streets will be fined. Cameras will be installed in all streets surrounding Tahrir Square to record traffic violation, especially illegal parking. Cairo's governor had earlier announced that 20 air-conditioned buses equipped with Wifi connections would ply three routes in Downtown Cairo to transport those using the car-park to their final destinations. The routes, though, have yet to be announced, as has the cost of parking in the garage. A committee of traffic officials is still working to identify streets on which it will be illegal to park once the Tahrir garage officially opens. The Tahrir underground car park is being hailed by officials as an important step in solving traffic problems in Cairo. There are plans to build another multi-level garage near Cairo Airport.
