After independent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday expressed bewilderment over the persistence of illegal parking, the Taipei Department of Transportation promised a crackdown on the practice.
“There shouldn’t be cases of a single city resident calling 233 times to say that there’s a car illegally parked [at a particular point],” Ko said in response to a report on “hot spots” for repeated parking violations.
“A single spot shouldn’t have such a high number of violations — it should have been taken care of long ago,” he said.
Adding that the number of violations reported at sites had remained unchanged over November and last month, Ko asked whether the law did not have any dignity, questioning what he called the department’s failure to research and address the causes behind the parking violations and telling officials to “wait and see” what would happen if similar statistics continued to emerge.
Transportation officials promised a crackdown on illegal parking in response to Ko’s comments.
“In the past, our enforcement [of parking rules] hasn’t been up to par,” Taipei Transportation Commissioner Chung Hui-yu (鍾慧諭) said, adding that the department would place greater emphasis on ticketing violations, rather than simply issuing warnings.
Changing the culture is the major challenge the city faces in addressing parking problems, said Chen Ming-shiun (陳銘薰), chairman of the Taipei Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, which is responsible for monitoring the police force’s response to violation reports filed by city residents.
“Illegal parking is extremely prevalent in Taipei,” he said. “The main problem is that residents’ ‘obedience to the law’ isn’t truly ‘obedient.’”
He said that because of the lack of strict enforcement, people often “temporarily” park in illegal areas and are allowed to drive away without a ticket when the police arrive.
Chen also cautioned against over-interpreting current statistics about “hot spots,” saying that the bulk of violations reported for seven of the top 10 locations resulted from a limited number of individuals.
In the future, his commission would sift through violation reports to avoid allowing particular individuals to skew the statistics, he said.
Chung said that while discussions with the traffic division of the city’s police department have yet to be held, any stricter enforcement would likely take place on a “random” basis to allow the city to make the best use of limited personnel.
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