Every weekend, Xidan Commercial Street welcomes a large number of customers. Along with that comes the scarcity of parking spaces and parking difficulties. To address this pain point for the residents, Xicheng District Urban Management Committee, in collaboration with Amap, has integrated real-time dynamic information of over 2,000 parking spaces from 11 parking lots including Xidan Joy City, Hanguang Department Store, and Xidan Renewal Market into Amap. Starting from July 1st, residents can use the Amap app to check the real-time parking information of major shopping malls in Xidan Commercial Street, providing a more convenient parking experience.
"When there are many people during the weekends in Xidan Commercial Street, many cars are simply parked on the roads, which not only affects traffic but also brings unnecessary losses to the vehicle owners," said Chen Hong, Director of the Traffic Comprehensive Management Center in Xicheng District. Since the beginning of this year, she and her colleagues have started visiting and conducting surveys to collect parking information in different time periods in Xidan commercial area, including weekdays, weekends, and holidays. During the visits, Chen Hong and her colleagues found that during peak hours in shopping mall parking lots, there are often available parking spaces in office building parking lots in Xidan Commercial Street. However, it is difficult for shoppers to obtain this information, resulting in unused parking spaces.
"Considering that most people use smartphones or in-car navigation systems for travel, we have partnered with Amap to integrate real-time parking information in the app, helping people overcome this 'information barrier'," Chen Hong said.
The 11 parking lots included in this integration comprise over 2,000 parking spaces, not only involving several major shopping malls but also three parking lots near the commercial street including the office building and hotels, totaling over 400 parking spaces. The straight-line distance to each shopping mall is within a range of 500 meters, and it takes only a 5-minute walk to reach them. Wang Xu, the product manager of Amap, introduced that after initial testing, the accuracy of the dynamic parking data for these 11 parking lots has significantly improved. Once officially launched, the accuracy of available parking space information will reach 100%.
Next, Xicheng District will further optimize the means of providing dynamic parking data for the surrounding areas of Xidan commercial district, aiming to collaborate with several popular food-related apps, allowing citizens to accurately obtain parking information through various platforms.
