Lawmaker mulls draft proposal on high parking fees
Print Edition
A LOCAL lawmaker is considering drafting a proposal to urge the city government to intervene and curb the steep rise in parking fees since the beginning of last year.
Since March last year, management companies and developers were given the nod to fix the parking fees themselves.
But more than 10 communities have reported substantial increase in parking charges ever since the government scraped its regulation on parking fees following a notice issued by China’s development and reform commission.
The notice had asked provinces and cities to loosen up pricing on seven kinds of services, including parking service in residential areas, to enable the market to play a role in resource distribution and promote development of related service industries.
But before that, the local government had a set of guidelines for parking that restricted fees between 150 and 400 yuan (US$61) a month. But the fees have doubled or even tripled since last year. Some media reports claimed that in some places the charges were as high as 2,000 yuan a month!
“I used to live in a high-end complex and only paid about 400 yuan a month for my car,” said a woman, surnamed Chen, who moved into a new residential complex in Yangpu District at the end of last year. “I am now paying 865 yuan a month even though the price of the apartment here is much lower than my previous complex.”
Many of her neighbors are refusing to accept the new charges. Instead, they park their cars on the roads near the community that sometimes block access to the complex, or cause inconvenience and even risk the lives of other drivers.
Few others park their cars in front of the garage exits to “protest against the unreasonable charge,” Chen said.
A local lawmaker and lawyer, Chen Jian, said despite the reforms and opening up, price control authorities should still monitor price fixing of parking spaces in the city.
“Residents’ commission can approach the price control department, which can check whether the increase is reasonable and based on service quality and costs,” he said. “Otherwise they can ask the developers or management companies to correct the problem.”
Chen said he was considering drafting a proposal over the issue for the coming congress, which will be held at the end of this month.
Some residents said they had complained about the problem to government departments, including housing administration and price management offices, but all of them said they had no authority over it now because of the new regulations.
Zhang Jie, a lawyer, said the government had made a wrong decision by loosening prices of parking charges as parking spaces were very few and there was huge demand for them.
Shanghai has only 640,000 parking spaces in downtown residential areas, while demand is as high as 1.33 million, according to statistics released last year by traffic authorities.
“Loosening up can only lead to price increase, rather than decrease, as consumers have no room for negotiations,” Zhang said. “The government should find a way to solve the problem.”
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