Vertical car parks could put paid to town's congestion

Ti Gong

An intelligent vertical car park at the Shineland Park in Nanxiang has opened for a trial period.

As the first of its kind in Jiading, the seven-story garage has 75 parking spaces, of which 60 are for cars of regular size and 15 for SUVs. Drive a car in and the automated parking system will do the rest.

Bucoo is the company behind the innovation. The Jiading-based startup is dedicated to Internet plus smart parking and has an ambition to become a front runner  in industry.

There are more than 300,000 privately owned cars in Jiading but the narrow streets and limited public spaces in old town make parking a problem in a district renowned for its auto industry.

Bucoo is helping ease the conflict by upgrading the traditional business with the latest information technology as well as the most advanced design, making the best use of limited spaces and improving management.

Unlike traditional drive-in parking garages, this facility is operated electronically by special elevators that automatically deliver cars to allocated spots.

When picking up the car, drivers can pay via mobile phone and the car will be delivered to the driver automatically. The whole procedure can be completed within two minutes.

If all the parking lots in Nanxiang could be transformed into vertical ones, another 1,500 parking spaces will be added, Bucoo estimates.

At present, around 1,500 to 2,000 cars are parked on streets in Nanxiang which means Bucoo’s solution could find most of them a space off the road. Hence traffic congestion could be eased to some extent with fewer cars on the street.

Each vertical garage Bucoo develops looks different as each is tailored in line with the surrounding environment. The newest one at Shineland Park incorporated an old tree.

Bucoo changed its design three times with an additional investment of 700,000 yuan (US$103,400) to include the tree and let it become part of the scenery.

Bucoo has developed 13 smart vertical parking projects around the city, including one for STV Building and one on Zhoujiazui Road.

The company’s goal is building 10,000 smart parking facilities in the next three years, said Yan Yeqing, Bucoo’s chairman.