More than 400,000 automobiles in Shenzhen could not find anywhere to park each day, said Dai Tongxin, a member of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the CPPCC.

Dai suggested the government encourage enterprises and individuals to invest in parking lots.

Parking lots in Shenzhen were far from enough, Dai said. The city had only about 160,000 parking spaces, while it had more than 600,000 automobiles.

The number of automobiles had been increasing by 20 percent year on year since 2002, while the number of parking spaces had increased by only 15 percent, Dai said.

The lack of parking lots contributed to Shenzhen’s traffic jams and automobile thefts, Dai said. In 2002, about 65 automobiles were stolen from parking lots, while in the first two months this year, 15 cars had been taken from parking lots.

Research showed city designers should consider building new parking lots when 50 percent of the parking spaces were occupied. When 70 percent of them were occupied, a city should start to build new parking lots, which should be operating by the time 90 percent of the parking spaces were occupied, Dai said.

Shenzhen’s parking lots were obviously overloaded, he said.

Dai also suggested the government enhance the supervision of parking lots. Shenzhen had more than 2,000 parking lots, but less than half of them had business licenses, he said.

(Shenzhen Daily February 26, 2004)