I wrote last week about a tendency in developing Asian countries to emulate the most anti-market Western planning policies, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. Paul Barter writes:
Would it surprise you to know that some cities control the price of parking even for private-sector off-street parking operations?
Beijing, Guangzhou, Hanoi and Jakarta do control parking prices, so I assume the practice is common throughout China, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Obviously, the “controlling” is a price cap, not a price minimum, and Barter makes a convincing case that the rates are indeed below the market price. I don’t recall ever hearing about price controls on private parking in the West, but it looks like the urge to come up with new ways to cater to car owners is universal.
I should add that Paul Barter’s new blog Reinventing Parking is a must-read for anyone interested in parking policy. He’s based in Singapore and writes a lot about Southeast Asia and China, and has another more general blog called Reinventing Urban Transport.
It depends on the city, really. Shanghai takes the opposite approach: it caps and auctions license plates. The Beijing elite wants to make sure it has all the driving and parking space it wants; the Shanghai elite prefers clean air and roads that occasionally aren’t congested.