4. Searching for parking spaces has long been a headache for many office workers in many big cities of China, especially for those working in central business districts. Parking near their companies for five days a week could cost them a lot of money. At the same time, even with prices for parking lots in residential areas (居民区) rising, most of their spaces remain idle during workdays. Now a new form of sharing economy has appeared in China — the shared parking space. It has become a huge market in some big cities.
In Qingdao, a coastal (海岸的) city in Shangdong, up to 10, 000 personal parking spaces have been turned into shared ones with the help of"Airparking", an online shared parking platform developed by a network company from Guangzhou.
Through a special app, users can either share or order a parking place. Owners who have idle parking spaces can share some information, including the parking position, license number and time limit (限制) on the platform. With the information, users can easily find the nearest place to park. The average (平均的) parking cost for shared parking is 4 yuan each hour, almost the same as the service cost in traditional parking spaces.
Qingdao is one of the Chinese cities that encourage shared parking. Some other big cites, including Beijing, Shanghai and Hefei, have also begun to try this idea. The Shanghai government, for example, has set up more than 6, 500 shared parking spaces to encourage the public to use. Shared parking will be more and more helpful to the drivers.