Car park issue opens Two Sessions

The city's parking lot shortage was a hot topic Tuesday, at the opening of Shanghai's annual Two Sessions meetings, where officials were urged by Shanghai Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) members to alleviate parking pressures for local residents.

Several of the record 500-plus proposals submitted on the first day of meetings by the 826 members, who belong to the country's political advisory body comprised of a nationwide group of constituents from various organizations, raised concern over the city's limited parking space.

"We're seeing an increasing number of disputes caused by too few parking spots at residential compounds; it's a problem that's seriously starting to affect people's daily lives," Liu Chunjing, a Shanghai Committee CPPCC member, also head of Changning district's United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China, told the delegation in attendance Tuesday.

Despite some 780,000 parking lots downtown, the city center is in need of an additional 367,000 car parks, of which roughly two-thirds are needed for residential compounds and the rest for commercial buildings, according to research by Tu Haiming, another CPPCC member and president of real estate agency Hong Kong Haode International Company.

Tu stressed that the shortage of parking spaces would continue to inconvenience people daily without effective solutions, given that local residents own nearly 3 million vehicles - a figure growing by at least 9,000 vehicles per month.

He advised Shanghai to adopt Hong Kong's system, which includes the opening of government-owned parking spaces outside of working hours and the development of idle land as car parks.

Wang Xiangchao, also a Shanghai Committee CPPCC member and researcher from Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Tuesday repeated his idea of forcing car plate bidders to provide proof of ownership of a parking space before permitting their purchases - a plan shot down Monday as "impractical" by the city's transport and port authority.

The second day of the six-day talks, dedicated to examining Shanghai Committee CPPCC members' proposals, continues today. The city's annual budget and work report are likely to be highlights of the meetings, while discussions on further development of the city and its economic outlook are also predicted to grab attention.

Last year, the city's Two Sessions managed 965 proposals, of which 73 percent were "resolved or accepted," CPPCC officials said Tuesday.