Hitting the spot

Like hundreds of thousands of drivers in China and in cities around the world Xu Zhiyong begins Sunday mornings with the hunt for a parking spot. His daughter is taking piano lessons at the China Welfare Institute Children's Palace near the Jing'an Temple. After his daughter gets out, he has to drive around for a long time before he finds a parking spot.

"It is not easy to park the car downtown even at the weekends because parents with children flock here for lessons. There is no parking inside the Children's Palace and I usually end up parking in one of the streets nearby," Xu Zhiyong said.

Sometimes if he is lucky he will score a park at the City Plaza which costs 10 yuan ($1.58) an hour. "It is all right to park there for five or six hours. I don't drive to work on weekdays because the parking rates for eight hours in the heart of the city are too expensive. I would drive to work but only if my company offered free parking," Xu said.

Once he and a friend spent 45 minutes searching for a park before a business meeting on Huaihai Road West. He believes this is the norm in Shanghai.

Xu lives in a residential neighborhood on Baoshan Road in Hongkou district. He reckons that about 40 percent of the residents there who own cars lack permanent parking spots. When the neighborhood was built in 2007 there was plenty of parking available. "But with more people buying cars parking is becoming a real problem. I was lucky and grabbed a permanent parking spot early on. I pay 450 yuan every month so I don't worry about parking at home," Xu said.

Not everyone is as lucky. Three weeks ago a city company offered 620,000 yuan for a permanent parking space in a commercial and residential quarter in Hongkou district. Though offering high prices like this for a parking spot is rare, it reflects a seriously growing problem for drivers in Shanghai.

Overcrowding

There were nearly 2.50 million vehicles registered in Shanghai at the end of last March, according to the fourth report on Shanghai's Overall Traffic and Transportation Conditions published by the Shanghai Urban Construction and Communications Commission. Cars accounted for 54 percent of these. And the number of cars in the city has on average increased by 124,000 year on year since 2004. The number of registered privately-owned cars was 1 million by last year — one of five households owned a car.

Because of this the city is now facing a car parking crisis. The commission's report noted that by last March 471,000 parking spots had been created in downtown residential areas but this only met a bit over 60 percent of the total demand as up to 743,000 cars need a parking spot in these areas at night.

Tu Haiming, a member of Shanghai People's Political Consultative Conference and the president of Shanghai Hodoor Real Estate Development Company told this year's two sessions last month that the root cause for the parking crisis was that cars had greatly outnumbered parking spots in the city.

He said there were parking problems in old residential areas and office buildings built in the 1990s without parking, major hospitals and shopping malls.

Yang Xiaoguang, the director of the traffic engineering department at Tongji University, agreed. "Car owners have flooded the parking buildings in the city and now they spill out into streets and alleys which were not designed for them and can affect access for emergency vehicles," Yang told the Global Times.

Yang said too many efforts had been put into developing the car industry and encouraging people to buy cars without thinking about setting aside a suitable number of parking spaces. "This was the root cause of the problem and should be a priority if the government really wants to respond to the growing number of complaints about parking," he said.

Proof of a park

Yang suggested that people who wanted to buy a new car should have to present proof that they had a parking space before they could purchase a car.

"This would help control the number of cars in the city and narrow the gap between the number of cars and the number of parking spots. It is no less important than issuing a limited number of car number plates which has been used to reduce the number of cars on the road," he said.

The professor believes that the government should take the initiative and shoulder the responsibility for tackling the parking issues at a regulation level by improving its urban planning policies.

"Newly-built residential areas and office buildings should come supplied with extra parking and the space for this should be designated during the urban planning process," Yang said.

He suggested that commercial parking buildings near old residential areas should open throughout the night to provide extra parking spaces.

A developer's problem

Obviously the city needs more parking. Ji Baohong, a Shanghai People's Congress delegate and president of the Shanghai Wangyuan Property Development Company explained why developers in Shanghai were not so interested in building parking lots.

"Parking spaces on the ground take up areas which can be built on and sold as apartments and this lowers the profits for developers," Ji told the Global Times.

He said that many developers then have to build parking lots underground to meet new government requirements, which were introduced last year, that commercial developments have to ensure there is one parking space for every household.

"Developers have to spend more time and money building underground parking lots because of geological problems in Shanghai. It costs twice as much to build one floor underground as it does to build a floor above the ground," Ji said.

He suggested that the government change the way the floor area ratio is calculated which would give developers an incentive to build more parking spaces.

Higher charges for parking could also discourage people driving downtown in peak hours. The Shanghai Urban Construction and Communications Commission and the Shanghai Municipal Transport and Port Authority have been drafting new regulations for parking in the city after seeking public feedback. Parking fees could probably be varied in future according to the type of vehicle, the time of day and the location.

"Economic measures like increasing the cost of parking, increasing the cost of owning a car and cutting the use of cars can effectively ease the pressure on parking space," said Yang. "If it costs more to park than to have a meal, most people would take public transport. And this would reduce the number of cars on the road," he added.

"It's always important to improve public transport and it should be expanded to cover a greater area. People are willing to take public transport if it is fast and efficient," he said.

A worldwide worry

Finding parking is not just a nightmare for Shanghai drivers. The problem has been worrying urban planners, legislators, police and drivers in big cities across the world.

Hong Kong, which has one of the highest population densities in the world, used to have parking problems. But things changed when the Hong Kong SAR government made up its mind to tackle the problem and turned every possible inch of idle land into parking spaces.

Hong Kong has about 250,000 parking spaces available during the day when about 157,000 are required and at night it offers 522,000 parking spaces even though no more than 439,000 are needed at present.

Tu Haiming suggested that Shanghai could learn from the Hong Kong experience. "In Hong Kong parking areas in government buildings are made available to the public after working hours and parking spaces in commercial buildings are offered to residents who live nearby," Tu said.

Apart from parking buildings there are about 18,000 roadside parking spaces in Hong Kong. But these have restrictions. Drivers who overstay on metered parking spaces face large fines. Drivers have to return to their cars every two hours and repark to keep their spaces.

"If we build enough parking places in the city, the next problem is to use them properly. Currently, the management of parking spaces is chaotic. There are parking areas that are not used for parking. This will have to be banned. And parking fees should be standardized," Yang Xiaoguang said.

Citing other countries Shanghai might learn from, Shen Huiqun, a Shanghai People's Congress delegate and the vice director of the Changning District Urban Construction and Communications Department, said that motorists in Japan had to show proof that they owned parking spaces near their homes before they were.