Photo taken on April 12, 2020 shows the entrance of a smart parking lot with ETC in the city of Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Xinhua/He Leijing)
BEIJING, May 22 (Xinhua) -- China's intelligent parking sector is likely to embark on a fast track of development this year, Li Tie, chairman with the council of China Center for Urban Development under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) told the Xinhua-run Economic Information Daily in an interview.
The intelligent parking sector in China has been developing rapidly in recent years. The market size of the industry is expected to grow at an annual rate of 20 percent to reach 15.4 billion yuan this year, according to the China-based industry research institute Zhiyan Consulting.
Forecast of market size of intelligent parking industry in China
(Unit: bln yuan)
Source: Zhiyan Consulting
The growth in the sector could be attributed to governments' efforts to address parking problems amid urban development and smart city construction.
China is projected to have 290 million civil vehicles by the end of 2020, which far outnumbers the estimated 119 million parking spaces, according to Zhiyan Consulting's report.
To make it worse, backward management and information asymmetry have caused the waste of parking resources. Data showed that only nine percent of Chinese cities used more than 50 percent of the parking spaces under their jurisdiction, and the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen used 49 percent, 40 percent, 48 percent and 55 percent respectively of their parking spaces.
Intelligent parking, which is a part of smart city system, is about integrating fragmented information to improve parking efficiency, stated Ma Qiang, deputy director with infrastructure development department under NDRC.
It can integrate parking reservation and navigation, face-to-face payments, automatic payments based on the license plate number, facial recognition, unattended parking and centralized data management.
Governments in China have turned to intelligent parking applications to address parking problems.
Beijing, for example, has deployed traffic control videos in 16 districts and counties under its jurisdiction as well its economic and technological development zones to provide technical support and big data for urban governance. The capital city also adopts electronic charging mode to make parking charges more transparent to the public.
These efforts have led to the improvement of parking efficiency and parking order in the city, which to a certain extent increase the turnover of on-street parking spaces and improves the travel experience of residents.
Qingdao city in Shandong province, Jincheng city in Shanxi province, among others, have introduced policies to strengthen the implementation of intelligent parking projects.
At the national level, the Ministry of Transport made it clear last year that it would promote the application of new transportation-related formats such as intelligent parking, Internet of vehicles and intelligent public transportation so as to build a modern data-driven transportation system.
Intelligent parking development also benefits from China's strive to build new infrastructure such as 5G networks, inter-city transportation, data centers, artificial intelligence and new-energy vehicle charging stations, which are driving the construction of smart cities and smart transportation.
In terms of investment, enterprises should be encouraged to participate in the investment in smart parking, stressed Li. (Edited by Su Dan with Xinhua Silk Road, silviasu07@163.com)
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