Rally held to show opposition to paid scooter parking plan

Scooterists and unionists staged a rally in Taipei's Ximending shopping district yesterday to protest a city government plan to increase the number of paid scooter parking spaces.

In order to better manage scooter parking, the city government plans to begin charging a NT$20 parking fee on each scooter parked in the Ximending area starting next month. More paid scooter parking would soon follow.

"Scooter parking is a mess in Ximending, and we do need some management," Ko I-min (柯亦民), a Confederation of Taiwan Trade Unions member, told the rally. "But charging a parking fee is not the equivalent of `management.'"

Ko said that giving out parking tickets and towing enforcement may be good ways to keep scooter parking in order, "but I don't understand why they [the city] decided to just charge parking fees instead."

"If you just charge for parking in parking spaces and don't give out tickets, people will just park illegally -- so what's the point?" a city parking fee collector who joined the protest said.

Some worried that the scooter parking fee may increase the economic burden for many low-income people.