The Tainan City Government and Acer ITS partnered to build a second-generation smart parking column with a charging function. The first phase has been completed with a total of 491 cars and it was officially launched on May 6th.
Director-General of the Tainan Municipal Bureau of Transportation, Wang Ming-Te pointed out, since the smart street parking billing system was put into use in April 2019, the average turnover rate of the road sections with smart parking columns in Tainan increased by 22.6% and the public's appreciation for smart parking columns reached 90% positive comments. The public generally reported that the smart parking column has the advantages of easy operation, multiple payment, and real-time information. To this end, the city government team continues to promote the second phase of the smart roadside parking BOT project, planning to build another 2,000 smart parking spaces at Tainan City Hall, Tainan High Speed Rail Station, and the Hsin-Hsing Rezoning Area.
Acer ITS is responsible for building this project. In addition to providing automatic billing, on-site payment, and real-time grid information services, 12 of its second-generation smart parking columns provide additional charging equipment to provide electric vehicles with charging at any time. Sixty smart charging parking spaces are expected to be completed by the end of April 2023. At present, the 491 smart parking columns completed in the first phase have been put into operation.
Wang Ming-Te further stated that the smart charging parking space is not dedicated to electric vehicles. In order to take into account the temporary parking rights of non-electric vehicles, the smart charging parking space still maintains a normal rate within the first hour and only charges a differential rate from the second hour (NT$15 every half an hour) to increase the turnover rate and ensure electric vehicle charging services. In addition, electric vehicles that actually use the charging service are priced at a charging service fee of NT$1 per minute and a 10% discount will be given 3 months before the official launch.
Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-Cher stated that the roads in Tainan are narrower than other counties and cities and the available street parking spaces are limited. Coupled with the continuous increase of private vehicles, further increasing the turnover rate to increase parking supply has always been an important task for the city government team. Smart transportation is also a key development direction for the city government team to build a livable city. Therefore, in 2018, Tainan took the lead in all of Taiwan in adopting the BOT method of promoting participation (promoting private participation in public construction) to build the first phase of a smart street parking billing system. Networked sensing technology and new management models strengthen traffic management, making Tainan a model for global smart cities.
These smart parking spaces offer a variety of payment methods, such as paying parking fees with iPass, EasyCard and iPass MONEY. To celebrate the launch of this new service, iPass and Acer ITS jointly launched a discount on smart street parking, combined with a 5% discount at participating local stores in Anping, Tainan.
(Image: Tainan City Government)