Electronic Parking Meters to Be Installed Across Beijing
Beijing has launched a plan to install electronic parking meters throughout the capital. The idea is to automate the jobs of the thousands of people, predominately migrant workers, who currently collect parking fees around the city, Shanghai Daily reports.
Transportation authorities in Beijing allow private companies to hire migrant workers to collect parking fees. However, there will soon be a lot less positions to fill.
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Every public roadside parking space in all of Beijing’s six districts and Tongzhou will be equipped with new meters by 2019. To test out the plan, 3,916 meters will be installed by the end of this year.
The new meters will monitor each vehicle in one of two ways. Either magnetic induction will be used to record the amount of time vehicles are parked, or cameras will be used to record parking duration and license plate numbers of vehicles. The magnetic meters do not take photos, so workers will still be needed to photograph license plates.
Beijing suffers from a severe lack of parking spaces. There are 2 million more cars than parking spaces in the capital. This new unified parking meter system should help ease Beijing's parking woes.
[Image via Shanghai Daily]
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