Hong Kong car owners’ group calls on government to fix ‘deteriorating’ parking situation

An influential motorists’ group has called on the government to introduce a citywide parking database with real-time information and to speed up the roll-out of automated systems to tackle the city’s acute shortage of spaces, accusing policymakers of putting their heads in the sand when it came to the issue.

The Hong Kong Automobile Association (HKAA) made the plea on Friday, saying the city had been grappling with a chronic shortage of spaces for more than 15 years, resulting in more traffic congestion and problems with illegal parking.

“Over the years, HKAA has continuously reflected the problem of inadequate parking spaces to the government, but it has all along adopted an ostrich policy to address the problem, which has led to [the situation’s] deterioration,” the group’s president, Ringo Lee Yiu-pui, said in a press conference. “It is evident that the government has completely ignored the views of stakeholders in its policy.”

At present there are about 680,000 parking spaces in Hong Kong, 195,000 of them in government-owned car parks and the rest of them privately owned.

However, the association – Hong Kong’s oldest car organisation and an affiliate of more than 150 overseas motoring groups – said the parking spaces failed to keep up with the rapid growth of the number of private cars, which stood at over 643,000 as of last month – up 51 per cent since 2008.

“From 2008 to 2019, the ratio of private cars and parking spaces was declining from 1.46 to 1.09, the lowest point of the decade, which shows that the government has completely ignored the needs of private car owners,” Lee said. “The lack of parking spaces has worsened into an urgent matter with the rapidly increasing number of new vehicles on the road in recent years.”