By KHT Staff
CHIAYI — Chiayi City says it has added hundreds of parking spaces. Some residents, however, appear to be experiencing a different reality: the spaces exist in city statistics, but not necessarily when they are circling the block looking for somewhere to park.
United Daily News reported that Chiayi City Councilor Wang Hao (王浩) questioned the city’s parking figures during a council session Wednesday, citing a Transportation Department report that listed 264 newly added car parking spaces along Shixian Road Section 3 (世賢路三段), Minguo Road (民國路), Beigang Road (北港路) and near Minsheng Park (民生公園).
Wang said site visits showed that some of the “new” spaces were not exactly new. In several areas, he said, cars had already been parking along the roadside before sidewalk improvement projects or line-marking work turned the same curbside areas into official parking spaces.
For residents, Wang said, the change felt less like a solution and more like a small act of urban magic: a white-line area becomes a marked parking space, the number rises on paper, and yet the hunt for parking continues.
He also said some of the newly counted spaces are located along outer roads where demand is lower, while central areas remain packed. The result, he said, is a gap between the city’s rising parking totals and the experience of drivers still unable to find a space where they actually need one.
Transportation Department Director Lu Jiang-hui (呂獎慧) said the city had previously focused on increasing the number of parking spaces and would look into why the public may not feel the reported improvement.
