Taiwan Today

City planners struggle to change a widespread attitude:"Whoever follows the traffic rules dutifully is a fool."

Robert Liu cannot afford to lose sleep. Monday to Saturday, he leaves his apartment in eastern Taipei by 7:00 A.M. so he can be at his office desk before 7:30. Driving to work in his old Ford Laser, Liu listens to Mozart on the tape player. But his mind keeps shifting to the same irritating problem. "When is this nonsense going to end?" he grumbles.

Lee Ta-kwai, one of Liu's col­leagues, wakes up even earlier. After he and his wife get up, they awaken their children and help them get ready for school. Then the whole family piles into the family car. They leave their home in a suburb of Taipei at a time when most of the city is still sound asleep. As Lee pulls away from the building, he glances at his watch. It is 6:30 A.M.

While on the road, Lee often worries about his wife and kids not getting enough sleep because of the early trip to Taipei. He drives fast but safely, yet all the time the tension is building over what will happen after he drops off his wife and kids. Worry turns to agitation as the daily hunt begins. Life has been like this ever since the family moved to the suburbs.

Both early morning drivers, and thousands more like them, share the same problem: finding a parking place.

"It has become a nightmare," Liu says. He claims that he has to arrive at work at least an hour before the work day starts at 8:30 in order to find a park­ing space near his office. When he fails to find a free space on the street, he usu­ally decides to park in one of the city's few public parking lots. The under­ground garage at the Taipei Railway Sta­tion is only a ten to fifteen-minute walk­ing distance from his office. But it costs about US$10 to park nine hours, and Liu says this puts a strain on his budget.

Severe parking problems are not ex­clusive to Taipei, as a Michael Maslin cartoon in a September 1990 New Yorker illustrates. A couple is sitting in a van parked in a metered parking place. The woman says: "I know this is what you've always wanted, Ken, but I'm sorry ─ I want more from life than just a terrific parking space." In New York, Tokyo, Bangkok, Paris ─ in practically every big city ─ people complain about parking. Just how bad is it in Taipei?

According to Huang Chan-nan (黃展南), vice director of the Bureau of Park­ing Management in Taipei, 210,000 cars park in the city daily. Ideally, there should be about 300,000 parking spaces throughout the city. The actual figure is 134,000. This figure represents 34,000 controlled parking spots (roughly 13,000 metered and 7,000 attendant-monitored spaces on public streets, and another 14,000 spaces in public garages or park­ing lots off the streets) and roughly 100,000 unmetered parking spaces on the city's streets and lanes.

With a shortfall of 166,000 parking places, it is no wonder that Taipei's streets, lanes, and sidewalks are clogged with illegally parked vehicles. Com­pounding the problem is the general tendency among drivers to avoid, if at all possible, paying for parking. As a result, public lots frequently have unused park­ing slots. Because the actual probability of receiving a ticket for illegal parking is usually quite low, drivers prefer parking in yellow curb areas, double parking, and jamming cars onto public sidewalks. Still, receiving parking tickets or finding that the car has been towed away hap­pens often to many drivers.

"One ticket a month is not a big deal," says Mona Tsai, owner of a company that makes cosmetic accesso­ries. "I remember once I got two tickets and my car was towed twice in less than a month." But given her parking habits, Tsai would no doubt receive considera­bly more tickets in a better regulated en­vironment. She openly admits that she often parks in front of store entrances and just turns on her car emergency flashers. "After all, I am only inside for a few minutes," she says.

In Taipei, a standard parking ticket is US$11. If a car is towed away, the cost mounts sharply, to US$54.50. This cov­ers US$36 for towing, US$7.50 for parking at the tow company lot, and US$11 for the parking ticket. Many drivers opt for taking their chances on receiving a ticket. Says Tsai, "I would rather get a 'ticket and be fined than waste my time looking for a place to park, which is tiring and extremely aggravating." Sometimes even all the illegal spots are taken. Tsai describes one instance when she couldn't find a single vacant spot anywhere near her destination: "Finally, I decided to drive home and take a cab instead," she says.

The Taipei City Government has made it a high priority to allevi­ate the parking problem. Huang Chan-nan points out that the quickest way is to build garages or parking lots on land already owned by the government. At present, there are twenty-two public garages and parking lots in Taipei, providing a total of 5,500 regulated parking spaces. The city government has another ninety-one poten­tial sites waiting to be converted into single or multilevel garages, or into underground parking lots. It has also been encouraging the private sector to build commercial parking lots, but the re­sponse has not been enthusiastic. Many factors contribute to this problem.

Because of the extremely high cost of land in high-density areas where public parking lots would be most con­venient, it is more profitable for develo­pers to build residential or commercial structures. And even if there were park­ing lots in convenient locations, the daily cost of parking for car owners would still be higher than the occasional ticket received for illegal parking.

Expensive land has led the city to de­velop a somewhat ingenious plan to build 5,000 new parking places annually for the next six years. Some of the lots will be built under schools, playgrounds, stadiums, and community parks. The idea was not greeted with overwhelming public support because of the noise and disruption the construction would bring to students and park users.

Parking has suddenly escalated into a major problem because Taipei residents have in the past couple of years enthu­siastically embraced the idea of private automobile ownership. First-time car owners add approximately 5,000 new cars per month to the half million already on the streets. If the trend continues, the city's current plans for adding 5,000 parking places per year are clearly inadequate. "We need a well-planned, long­ term parking policy," Huang says. "If we don't do something to control the growing number of automobiles in Taipei, the demand for parking spaces will increase endlessly. We need to set limits."

Authorities on traffic control have suggested ways to control the growth in automobile ownership, such as raising taxes for cars, gasoline, and automobile licenses; and limiting the number of years a car can be driven (measures al­ready taken with great success, for exam­ple, in Singapore).

Huang indicates that the city govern­ment has taken a tentative first step by drafting new traffic regulations which in­clude raising parking meter fees to almost three times the current rate of US$.50 per hour. The city also plans to buy and install another 20,000 curbside parking meters in the next two years. But that still leaves a large number of free ─ and uncontrolled ─ parking spaces. The city's 1,250 parking attendants can only correct some problems, such as ille­gal parking and commercial use of park­ing spaces. "We don't have the budget to hire enough people to take care of all the parking spaces in Taipei," Huang says.

None of the proposed solutions to the parking mess produces joy in the hearts of the city's drivers. For instance, car owner Philip Lo says, "If the govern­ment implements such policies, it will make the automobile a luxury available only to the affluent. That's unfair. The government must understand one thing: A car is a transportation tool, not a symbol of social status."

Huang disagrees. "True, parking lots are only for people who have cars," he says. "But every car owner, rich or poor, aggravates the city's traffic prob­lems because there aren't enough parking facilities. This causes a strain on society." The heart of the matter, Huang adds, is that car owner should share the financial cost of solving these problems since they are, after all, part of the prob­lem. "Car owners simply cannot enjoy the benefits of driving in the city without paying the price," Huang says. "That is real fairness!" He encourages people to include parking costs in their budgets before purchasing an automobile. And if driving to work and parking is a hassle, Huang advises people to "leave their car at home and take public transportation."

Taipei drivers seem to have reached the point where obeying traffic laws is a low priority. One frequently heard line il­lustrates the point: "Whoever follows the traffic rules dutifully is a fool." "Exactly right," Robert Liu says. "I used to be a law-abiding driver, but now that the traffic is so bad, I couldn't care less. If I can grab a parking space by taking advantage of others, I'll do it." Philip Lo laments this attitude, but says it is caused by the realities on the streets. "It's distorting human nature," he says.

To correct this attitude, Huang stresses the need for public programs to promote both driving and parking eti­quette. He emphasizes that these should go hand in hand with stricter enforce­ment of parking violations. "If drivers are not aware of traffic regulations and are not expected to have decent driving and parking habits, then fines and other forms of punishment are useless," he says.

Huang adds that the mass rapid tran­sit system now under construction will not be a panacea for either parking prob­lems or the overall traffic situation. "It will take a combination of things to make Taipei's traffic better," he says. "We need strict laws, courteous driving habits, sufficient parking spaces, and reliable public transportation."

These are laudable goals, but resi­dents can expect it to be a long time before the streets of Taipei will be snarl­ free. Many people would agree with Robert Liu's assessment: "I'll believe it when I see it."