An outdoor parking lot at an apartment complex in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — The controversy over parking inside private property, which has been a major source of inconvenience in everyday life, is being neglected without proper efforts to come up with a solution simply because there are no ‘grounds’ to execute administrative measures or enforcement.
The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission reported that the number of reports over disputes concerning parking on private property jumped from 162 cases in 2010 to 24,817 cases in 2020, up by a factor of 153.
Last year, the commission conducted a survey of 2,025 people about the issue, of which 24.3 percent complained about ‘double parking and entrance blocking’, followed by ‘unauthorized parking’ (21.5 percent) and ‘blocking the entrance to the parking lot’ (20.5 percent).
As of 2020, there were 2,581,992 privately owned cars in Seoul, with only 2,509,837 parking spaces throughout apartment complexes and residential districts. More than 70,000 cars have no place to park.
There are, however, 4,327,614 parking spaces in Seoul including privately owned buildings like malls and other public facilities, which is 30 percent more than the number of cars operating in the region, including commercial vehicles (3,157,361 vehicles).
In response, the commission proposed the introduction of a shared parking policy as a solution to the problem.
According to the policy, local authorities can ask privately owned buildings to open up their parking spaces in exchange for cuts in property taxes or traffic-related fees.
Other proposals include raising the number of minimum parking spaces from between 0.5 and 1 car per household to 1 car or more for all apartment complexes in the greater Seoul area.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
