Macau (MNA) – The government should address the acute shortage of parking spaces in the city instead of raising penalties for illegal parking offenses, the Vice President of Macau New Association, Sulu So Ka Ho, told Macau News Agency (MNA).
On Tuesday, the government proposed amendments to the current Road Traffic Law to impose heavier fines for transit infractions, with the director of the Transport Bureau (DSAT), Lam Hin San, stating that he believes stricter penalties will help to crackdown on rampant illegal parking.
Sou disagreed with Lam’s statement and criticized the government for not solving the issues fundamentally.
“We need the government to provide a long-term traffic control measure, because the number of vehicles in the city has been rising since 2007, and it will continue to grow,” said So, adding that “what the government did in recent years was only to reduce the number of street parking spaces for motorcycles, under the purpose of ‘city management’.”
According to DSAT statistics, the total number of registered two-wheel motor vehicles in Macau amounted to approximately 124,000, which long ago surpassed the number of legitimate parking spaces of 51,000 available for scooters and motorcycles.
“Generally speaking, scooters [and motorcycles] are facing a more severe issue in terms of parking space shortage, especially in old town areas such as the Northern district,” said Sou.
He suggested the government take Hong Kong as reference, as the number of parking spaces should be in line with the demand within each community.
“We need to look at the data to see the demand for parking spaces in each community, and then the government should try its best to build a car park using the idle lands or land parcels that it has retrieved earlier,” explained Sou.
