Shanghai will build more than 10,000 parking berths this year as the number of private cars in the city soar while the space to park the vehicles are limited, local traffic administration said yesterday.
Traffic officials said that parking problem was still a major headache despite their best efforts.
Those who do not pay the required parking fees or park their cars illegally will be recorded in the city credit system, officials said as they cracked down on illegal parking that only made traffic worse in some thoroughfares.
The traffic authorities said that three more Parking and Riding (P+R) lots will be built in the suburbs, which link to the subways going downtown. So far the city has 6 large P+R lots citywide with space for 2,300 cars near lines 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9.
The underground places of newly built green areas will also be used as parking space, officials said.
Experts and officials had estimated that the public parking gap stands at more than 300,000 berths and "is still growing". So far Shanghai has about 780,000 public parking berths in total. Since 2011, more than 50,000 public berths have been added. By 2015, there will a shortage of 45,000 berths in the Pudong New Area alone.
The Shanghai-registered vehicles number more than 2.6 million, out of which 1.4 million are private cars, the local traffic police said yesterday. About 220,000 private cars will be added this year. The increase, and the out-of-town vehicles, forces many to park their cars at no-parking spaces and slapped with tickets.
Modern movie dream in retro Mingguo street