Parking within the time limit and variable pricing under different circumstances are two features of parking meters. These features help consolidate car owners’ sense of time, raise their awareness of parking payment when parking their cars on the roads, reduce the time and space for parking of a single vehicle on the road, increase the parking turnover, and therefore enhance the road capacity. Therefore, parking meters are a perfect solution to the problem of parking congestion in high demand areas.

The phrase “咪表”（Mibiao in Pinyin）, which is a Chinese nickname for “parking meters”, originated in Hong Kong. The parking service through “parking meters” means the internationally-adopted way in which “parking meters” are used to record the time for parking and collect the fee by debit or credit cards. By doing so, it aims to enhance car owners’ sense of time and raise their awareness of parking payment so that the time and space for parking of a single vehicle on the road can be reduced and the road capacity can be improved.

The successful application of parking meters overseas

It is often acknowledged that Car C. Magee in Oklahoma City, U.S. is the first person that advocated the design of parking meters. On May 13th, 1935, he patented the “coin-operated parking meters”, which solved the parking problems in the commercial area in Oklahoma City. At the time, people who worked in this area parked their cars on the streets along the commercial area for a whole day, so no parking space was left for shoppers or tourists who also went there. On July 16th, 1935, the first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City. People were demanded to pay for parking on the streets and there was a limit on the amount of time for parking. People would be fined if they parked their cars without paying for it or exceeded the time limit for parking. Ever since then, parking meters became popular all around the United States. The parking meters at the time were coin-operated, which entailed much inconvenience such as difficulty in changing notes into coins, a big flow of cash, difficulty in management, and the risk that coins might be stolen easily, etc. However, in recent years the electronic parking meters have gradually taken their place.

After their emergence in the 1930s, parking meters quickly became popular in Europe. They were installed extensively in the 1950s in Australia and later in Japan and Hong Kong. Up to 1947, parking meters have been installed in 888 cities, a majority of which are small and medium scale cities. Nowadays, many countries are installing parking meters to provide parking service. Parking meters have become the major way for developed countries such as Europe and the United States to manage parking on the roads. This major managerial method, along with the variable pricing, has increased the utilization of parking spaces, reduced the amount of time spent on looking for parking spaces and therefore reduced the additional traffic volume because of doing so.

Many European countries such as France and Switzerland are now using the centralized parking meters, that is, one parking meter is connected to several parking spaces. People can insert coins or use debit/credit cards to prepay for parking at a pre-set rate. After finishing the payment, they can get from the parking meter a payment voucher that shows the time of payment, the amount of payment, and the time limit for parking, etc. The police are in charge of the management and law enforcement. If the police officers patrol and find vehicles parked without payment or exceed the parking time limit, vehicle owners will be ticketed. If the owners do not pay the fine on time, their behavior will be recorded in the social credit management system, which will restrict or affect their social behaviors like buying/selling cars, their issues of housing, and their issues of employment, etc.

The parking fees are also collected solely by means of parking meters on the roads in Australia. The pricing varies in different areas. It is the most expensive in the downtown area and cheaper on the outskirts. The parking time limit for each payment is 15 minutes or 30 minutes. The payment method varies in accordance with the types of parking meters. Normally the old parking meters only accept coins, but after the construction and renovation, centralized parking meters that can print payment vouchers have been installed in most of the downtown area.

Reasons for the popularity of parking meters

Parking meters, the devices for parking fee collection, have been used extensively in many countries and areas around the world. This popularity cannot be explained without mentioning their unique function and advantage.

(1) The devices help increase the parking turnover on the roads. Along with the installation of parking meters, various means such as limiting the time of parking, setting the period when the payment is required, and differentiating pricing in different areas have been introduced at the same time. In this way, pricing can be used for leverage, parking resources on the roads can be better distributed, parking turnover on the roads can be improved, and the roads’ function of providing temporary parking and short-term parking spaces can be better performed.

(2)The simple and fast fee collection procedure helps reduce the costs. Parking meters record the length of parking and collect the parking fees via debit/credit cards. Therefore, there is no need of labor for fee collection so that problems derived from the increase of labor costs can be avoided.

(3) The devices enable better regulation of parking and road traffic. If parking on the roads is managed and regulated by means of parking meters and the roads with parking meters are monitored specifically by traffic wardens, common traffic offences, such as parking in a clearway and parking too close to intersections, can be dealt with immediately, the traffic can be diverted in a more dynamic and more effective way, and the city outlook can also be improved.

The application in china and the related problems

In order to reinforce the pricing and management of parking on the roads and enhance the city image, some cities in China have imported the system of parking meters. In the middle of the 1990s, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Foshan and Dalian were selected as the first few cities to import parking meters and install them in the same mode as that in Hong Kong and Macao. Up to now, about 50 cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Harbin, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Urumqi, Haikou, Xi’an, and Taiyuan, etc. have ever used or have been using parking meters.

For various reasons, not long after the installation, parking meters in many cities have been out of use or even removed. From 1999 till now, nearly 10,000 parking meters have been installed in Beijing, but most of them have gone out of use soon after the installation. This occurred not only in Beijing, but also in other cities such as Hangzhou, Nanchang, Shijiazhuang, and Changsha, etc. All these projects of parking meters were suspended because problems kept coming up all the time. Even in the cities where parking meters are still in use, there remain various problems, for instance, the pricing is not standardized and sometimes there may be conflicts between car owners and traffic wardens. Several years ago in Shanghai, a small-scale pilot project of parking meters was carried out on some roads in Pudong District, but it was still called off in the end.

Affected by various factors such as the technology and quality of parking meters as well as the declining market demand, many manufacturers of parking meters in China have stopped the production in recent years. Up to now, parking meters are only in use in a few cities such as Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Liuyang and Qingdao.

Parking meters have been in use for over half a century in European countries and in the United States, but why can’t such development of parking meters go on smoothly in China? There are two main reasons for it. Firstly, parking meters are an automatic fee-collecting system and car owners are supposed to pay of their own accord. However, the public awareness of the necessity for parking payment in China is still insufficient. Secondly, most of the parking meters in China have not incorporated a locking system, which means, even when the time for parking exceeds the limit, the vehicle will not be locked by the device and the car owner can still drive the car away easily. Moreover, car owners who use parking meters are required to swipe the card once before parking and again later after parking; otherwise, all the money in the card will be gone. There are many complaints about it among citizens, whose confidence in the use of parking meters has been badly shaken henceforth.

If we want to make the application of parking meters in China more feasible and more effective, the experience in Zhuhai is worth our attention. In order to integrate the resources for parking and optimize the management of parking on the roads, the municipal government in Zhuhai has brought in Regulation on Parking of Zhuhai City, and the municipal Department of Transportation has formulated the rules for parking in accordance with it. Zhuhai is the first city in China where the behavior of evading payment when parking by means of parking meters has been laid down as a traffic violation in the rules and regulations. In these regulations the governing body for law enforcement on the roads, the governing body for parking management, and the penalties are clearly stated.

Can parking meters make parking in Shanghai easier?

Shanghai is an international metropolis. In recent years, as car parc increases rapidly, the parking difficulties in Shanghai become more severe. As is shown in the investigation, 98.01% of car owners think parking difficulties exist in Shanghai and the degree varies in accordance with their own understanding; among them, 61.79% think such a problem is quite severe in Shanghai. These parking difficulties are more easily seen in places such as hospitals, elementary and secondary schools, train stations, offices that provide public service, some places where business and recreational amenities are provided, and some workplaces.

Parking within the time limit and variable pricing under different circumstances are two features of parking meters. These features help consolidate car owners’ sense of time, raise their awareness of parking payment when parking their cars on the roads, reduce the time and space for parking of a single vehicle on the road, increase the parking turnover, and therefore enhance the road capacity. Therefore, parking meters are a perfect solution to the problem of parking congestion in high demand areas. Besides, the result of the latest survey shows that parking meters have gained more and more acceptance among citizens in Shanghai. 62% of the car owners that are investigated support the installation of parking meters, 25.11% remain neutral and only 12.89% oppose it. Concerning this advantageous factor, now it is a good time to promote the installation of parking meters in Shanghai.

In essence, the successful installation of parking meters lies in the degree of convenience for the users, so we have to focus more on users’ needs, simplify the parking procedure, and ensure better user experience. To achieve it, we need to upgrade both the technology of the parking meter system and the service provided by it. First, we should add a locking device to the system of parking meters. Parking meters in some cities overseas can lock the cars if the parking time exceeds the limit, and to unlock their cars, car owners must go to the parking meters and pay the arrears. Second, we should simplify the procedure of payment and make it more convenient to the users. Besides the traditional payment methods, either to insert coins or to swipe the cards, we had better incorporate the new payment methods that are extensively used in China, such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, so that people can complete the payment instantly by using the applications in their smartphones.

Furthermore, we should also attach important information such as simple instructions or diagrams, pricing information, and the time limit for parking, etc. to the parking meters. In this way, we can ensure that users can learn to use parking meters quickly and get relevant information easily. Last but not least, in order to boost the self-payment at parking meters in Shanghai, we should draw on the experience of the developed countries, that is, their credit system and their system of rules and regulations; we should also include the self-payment at parking meters in the credit management system of our city, strengthen the law enforcement, and raise people’s awareness of parking payment.

Note:
The author is an Associate Professor of the Think Tank of Sustainable Development and New-Style Urbanization at Tongji University. This article represents only the author’s personal point of view and it first appeared in Shanghai Observer at https://www.shobserver.com/news/detail?id=12455.