[Kaohsiung News] The Transportation Bureau of Kaohsiung City Government has worked with private industry vendors to continue to build smart parking spaces and geomagnetic devices that effectively apply technology to parking fee management and disclose real-time parking information. The Transportation Bureau will continue to accelerate building these facilities and by 2026, it will be able to reach the goal of 10,000 smart parking spaces and 28,000 geomagnetic parking spaces, which will provide citizens with convenient parking services and create a safe traffic environment.
According to the Transportation Bureau, a total of 1,720 smart parking spaces have been built in the Kaohsiung Software Park, Cheng Ching Lake and surrounding roads of Wei Wu Ying. The smart parking system utilizes license plate recognition technology to automatically calculate parking fees. The paperless billing can reduce approximately 870,000 parking bill papers per year, which is equivalent to reducing 1.3 metric tons of carbon emissions. This is a great way to reduce carbon emissions and also to increase the turnover rate of the parking spaces by more than 50%, which will significantly resolve the parking problem.
In order to increase the smart parking area, the Transportation Bureau has already requested private industry to install smart parking spaces and geomagnetic devices in the on-street parking outsourcing contract. The location of smart parking spaces will be considered first around popular tourist attractions, major roads and other high parking demand roads, while the remaining charged areas will be equipped with geomagnetic devices to monitor the parking spaces. This will provide citizens with comprehensive information on the availability of on-street parking spaces, thereby reducing the time required for drivers to search for parking spaces.
The Transportation Bureau said that the smart parking equipment has three different types including low-position, parking meter and high position and prior to installation, it will communicate with the local community and plan appropriate equipment according to the local conditions. Recently, more than700 smart parking spaces in Heti Road, Minzu Road and the surrounding roads have been initially completed. Currently, the system is in the integration and testing stage and is expected to be formally launched in the middle of this year. The smart parking spaces around Au Zi Di, the Museum of Fine Arts and the surrounding roads of the Dome shopping area are also being progressively installed.
Director-General Shu-Chuan Chang recently went to Heti Road to inspect the installation of the smart parking equipment and instructed the outsourcing contractor to complete the work on time and with good quality and to ensure that the system is perfect in order to provide the citizens with more convenient parking services as soon as possible. Director-General Shu-Chuan Chang pointed out that the smart parking equipment and geomagnetic sensors can immediately transmit the information about the remaining parking spaces; besides showing the information on the website of Transportation Bureau (https://kpp.tbkc.gov.tw/) for the public to inquire, they also match with the open data policy to facilitate the value-added application of traffic information in the private sector, taking the role of an open data provider to provide information to the private sector for intermediary use. At present, the Parking Voice APP is also available for inquiry, guiding the citizens to look for parking spaces quickly, thereby reducing the traffic flow and saving energy and reducing carbon emissions while searching for parking spaces.
The Transportation Bureau has commissioned a third-party organization to conduct a survey on the satisfaction rating of smart parking services in Kaohsiung City. The majority of the citizens are well informed about the paperless parking bill issuance and payment methods, and nearly 90% of the citizens have shown their support for the smart parking policy. The Transportation Bureau will continue to accelerate the installation of smart parking spaces and geomagnetic devices and by 2026, it will be able to reach 10,000 smart parking spaces and 28,000 geomagnetic parking spaces, which will provide the citizens with real-time parking information, avoiding the detour of searching for a parking space and achieving the goal of reducing carbon emissions by going paperless.