ALL revenue from roadside parking is handed to the city’s finance commission and is used as a special fund for improving traffic conditions, Shenzhen Road Traffic Management Center said Monday, responding to doubts over the use of the funds raised by Xinhua report on the nation’s other megacities.

    The income and expenses will be revealed to the public every year, the center said.

    On July 8, Shenzhen started piloting collection of roadside parking fees at 1,673 parking places in four areas including Nanshan CBD, Zhuzilin, the southern part of Futian CBD and the Tianbei area of Luohu District.

    According to related rules, the center will announce the details of its revenue between July and December to the public in January 2015.

    The government is planning 20,767 roadside parking spots in Longgang and Bao’an districts and some new areas that are to be opened in 2015. The parking spots, spread across 314 sections of roads, are categorized into 57 administrative areas by the Shenzhen Road Traffic Management Center. The Shenzhen Road Traffic Center had already initiated the creation of 13,935 parking spots in Futian, Luohu, Nanshan and Yantian districts, and the project will be completed before the end of the year. Fee collection for the parking places will start at the beginning of next year.

    By the end of 2015, a total of 45,000 roadside parking places will be introduced.

    Unlike most cities in China that collect money for roadside parking, Shenzhen Municipal Government decided not to contract with a private company, and set up a branch to handle the affairs instead.

    According to some earlier reports by Chinese language newspapers, Beijing and Shanghai’s governments get less than half of the revenue from the companies responsible for collecting parking fees, while Guangzhou only gets 3 percent. Roadside parking places, considered a public resource, have effectively become privatized in these places.

    In Beijing, 110 parking lot operators control around 58,000 roadside parking places. According to related rules, the operators paid 390 million yuan (US$64 million) to the government in 2013, much less than what they collected in fees. The operators charged 10 yuan, 6 yuan and 2 yuan per hour, depending on a spot’s location. If all parking places are used for eight hours a day, the operators would make over 1 billion yuan a year. Other cities, such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, face similar situations, while Tianjin has received zero revenue from operators of roadside parking places.

    (Han Ximin)