In a move that will transform the parking experience in China's capital, Beijing announced a pilot program in which all 4,086 curbside electronic meters will go online across the city by the end of this month.
It's not the first time that Beijing's traffic authorities have tried to modernize its parking system. In 1999, parking meters were installed in the city in the hope that car owners would adopt the habit of paying parking fees using a meter.
The biggest factor that emboldened drivers to ignore parking meters is that they could do so without any consequences. With the new smart parking system, a car's information will be recorded as it enters and leaves a parking space. A car owner's violations of parking regulations will be reflected in social credit platforms that set out to paint an individual's trustworthiness picture.
Tapping into people's newly ingrained reliance on smartphones, Beijing Traffic, the official app of the city's traffic authorities, enables a driver to find an empty electronically monitored parking space on a map and pay parking fees with their phones.
For those who are yet to install the app, they can ask for the help of a parking attendant, who carries a POS terminal for fee collection. For some parking spaces, there are even solar-powered self-service fee collectors equipped with touch screens.
The adaptation of smart parking technology, however, is not without its downsides. Bearing the brunt of this new development are parking attendants in the city. According to the city's traffic authorities, as electronic meters become more prevalent, parking attendants will drop in number, their responsibility shifting from clocking and fee collection to checking and maintaining the new meters.
The benefits for parking to go smart, however, outweigh those concerns. An efficient, effective and hassle-free parking system will not only make parking easier and optimise parking resources, it will also further foster personal integrity through making drivers think twice about shirking their parking fees.
