Can Guangzhou's skyrocketing parking fees prevent congestion?

Recently, the Guangzhou Municipal Price Bureau announced the "Guangzhou Optimized Parking Charging Differentiated Fees Plan": The open parking lot of a residential area in one category has risen from 1 yuan per hour in the past to 1 yuan per 15 minutes, an increase of 300%; commercial parking lot consists of Five minutes in half an hour rose to 15 minutes, 4 yuan; the roadside meter parking rose from 2 yuan every 15 minutes to 5.5 yuan per 15 minutes, the maximum price from 80 yuan / day rose to 176 yuan / day.

The Guangzhou Municipal Price Bureau explained that the optimized adjustment of the differential parking fees is to use the role of price levers to guide individual vehicles to choose the outer parking of cities as much as possible, and guide the public to choose public transport modes to ease traffic jams in the central city.

Can rising parking fees work in the name of blocking? Takahashi, who lives in Panyu, Guangzhou, said that he had to drive to work because of inconvenience in transportation, and the cost of parking could only be tolerated.

After the increase in parking fees, will the traffic conditions improve significantly? The Guangzhou Municipal Price Bureau stated that “governance of urban traffic congestion is a systematic task that requires comprehensive measures to be implemented through various types of measures. It is not a single measure that can produce 'special effects'”.

The Guangzhou participating committee of Guangzhou, an important participant in the adjustment of the parking fee program, explained that they commissioned a third-party assessment that, after implementing differential parking fees, it is estimated that the traffic flow in Guangzhou's downtown can be reduced by about 10% in the near future, and the average speed of main roads in Guangzhou can be improved. 4%-5%, the price adjustment plan is based on this data.

In 2013, the Guangzhou Communications Committee commissioned the Guangzhou City Statistics Consultation Center to carry out a questionnaire survey to analyze the willingness to choose bus travel under different rates, and obtain the trend effect of turning to public transit travel at different rates, but it has no real sense. The "actual measurement" of the data shows that the distance between the data obtained and the true choice of the owner is unknown.

After the fee increases, where will the multi-benefit portion be used? The Guangzhou Municipal Price Bureau stated that on the one hand, it can be used to make up for the costs of car park operations and management; on the other hand, it can attract more social resources to invest in the construction and operation of parking lots to ease the “difficulty of parking” problem.

Xu Jianrong, a professor at the School of Civil and Transportation Engineering at South China University of Technology, believes that in order to encourage the public to reduce the use of cars, the price of parking in residential and transfer parking spaces should not be increased, so that the public can usually put the car at home and re-use vehicles at weekends during non-peak traffic times. . The government should use parking fees to increase revenue to improve public transportation.

The Guangzhou Municipal Communications Commission stated that after the price adjustment, Guangzhou will strive to improve public transport capacity and service levels, including 25 bus lines added this year, 500 new bus capacity simultaneously, 50 km bus lanes, and improved taxis and subways. service.