Parking Plight

China is home to 250 million vehicles even though passenger vehicle sales witnessed the first drop in 2018 of the past 28 years. For each vehicle, there are only 0.8 parking places on average nationwide. In China’s first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the supply of parking spaces is far from enough to meet the growing number of vehicles. Over the years, this lack of parking lots has largely been neglected by the government. According to parking lot management regulations in some cities, more than a dozen government agencies are involved including the departments of transportation, public security, finance, tax and land resources, causing the accountability and responsibility of each agency to be blurred. Transport experts argue that it is high time to designate a unified and powerful organ to take charge of the management of parking issues and construct a mechanism with a focus on driver benefits, instead of collecting fees.