Hong Kong’s lack of parking spaces is ‘cause for concern’ and only getting worse, Director of Audit says
- Director of Audit predicts vehicles to soon outnumber parking spaces
- Government scolded for charging too little at city-run car parks
Hong Kong needs more public parking spaces and must do a better job managing its existing car lots and parking facilities, the city’s chief auditor said on Wednesday.
The Director of Audit’s twice yearly report found that Hong Kong’s ratio of public parking spaces to private cars dropped from 1 to 1.5 in 2006 to 1 to 1.1 in 2018.
“The decreasing ratio reveals a shortfall of private vehicle parking spaces that has become a cause for concern,” the report said.
The Director of Audit report is a twice-yearly assessment of government-funded projects. The audit, which is overseen by the Audit Commission, does not notify in advance what projects and government departments will be scrutinised.
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At the end of 2018, according to the report, Hong Kong had 756,909 parking spaces, of which 238,320 were for public use. The number of all licensed vehicles was 744,191, including private, government and business vehicles.
Public car parks, which provide about 5,500 parking spaces, were found to be 90 per cent full on average during peak hours – up from 66 per cent in 2013.
It also said that by last November there were 13 abandoned vehicles in five multistorey, government car parks that needed to be removed. Some of the abandoned vehicles had been left there for years, and one was found to have been occupying the same parking space for 11 years.
Street parking spaces in 15 of the city’s 37 districts were found to be almost always full, failing to hit the government’s goal of having 15 per cent of spaces available at any time.
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Nine of those districts charged only HK$2 for 30 minutes.
By December 2018, there were about 34,000 street parking spaces in Hong Kong, among which half were metered.
The audit report urged the Transport Department to review the fees charged by parking metres.
The commission also suggested the government look into the city’s standards for parking spaces in housing estates, which in the future would require developers to provide more parking spaces
Civic Party lawmaker Jeremy Tam Man-ho said the government should change the planning standards and increase the ratio of residential units to parking spaces. This ratio had decreased since early 2000 because of the government’s incorrect projections about vehicle numbers in Hong Kong.
“By 2021 or 2022, on average, each car in Hong Kong will not have one parking space,” Tam said.
He also urged the government to limit the number of private cars in the city, suggesting that a way to accomplish that would be to impose higher vehicle taxes.
