Macau Matters | Our new parking meter system

Richard Whitfield

Everybody should have noticed by now that Macau is converting to a new system of on-street parking meters. From several perspectives I believe that this new system is a major step backwards and a great opportunity lost.

Parking meters control the use of street-side parking bays. In the old system you parked, got out of your car and used coins or your MacauPass card to pay at the adjacent meter for using the bay for a period of time. Policemen could easily tell when a vehicle had over-stayed because empty meters flash a light. This is a well known, very reliable and easily understood system used all round the world for many, many years. The biggest problem with it is periodically collecting coins from the meters.

The “new” system uses kiosks that control several parking bays – you park, get out of your car and walk to the relevant kiosk, key in the parking bay ID and use coins or your MacauPass to pay for using the bay for a period of time. This is also a well known system that has been used for many years and has the well known problem that policemen cannot easily identify cars that have overstayed their payment. To compensate, coin collection is somewhat easier (but still has to be done regularly).

I keep on saying that Macau needs to be a showcase for new technology and be an example of “living in the future”. So, why do we choose to upgrade our system of on-street parking management to 20-year-old technology? And why do we choose a very poor implementation of such old technology, e.g. the parking kiosk instructions are only available in Chinese and Portuguese. Surely these systems come with instructions in any language?

Also, why do we spend lots of money putting in the older parking meter technology all round Coloane and other “outer suburban” places just a few years ago only to replace them with “new” parking kiosks a few years later?

Well proven toll road systems exist where vehicles are fitted with ID transponders that are linked to credit cards so that when you pass through a tunnel or drive on a toll road you are automatically charged a fee, eg the AutoPass system for the cross-harbor tunnels in Hong Kong, which dates from the early 1990s. The MacauPass and Octopus Card in Hong Kong also give another way of thinking about how to do on-street parking, and this technology is also 20+ years old.

It is easy to conceptualize how these approaches can be adapted to on-street parking. You buy a transponder for your car, fit it in the passenger side wheel well and link it to your credit card. Each parking bay is fitted with a transponder reader located near the front passenger wheel position in the bay. When you park your car, the reader interrogates the vehicle transponder to identify the vehicle and timestamps its arrival. When you drive away the reader also recognizes this event and charges your credit card for usage of the bay. The reader can also be fitted with an LED light that flashes when a vehicle has been in the bay for longer than the permitted maximum parking time, and can notify the police of the situation and automatically fine the vehicle.

Such a system totally eliminates coin collection and automates fines for over-stayers. If it does not exist, I am sure that if the Macau government supported the development of such a system we would have a world leading on-street parking management system that is “future-proofed” for use even by autonomous vehicles, and one that we could export all round the world. Even if it does exist already, implementing it in Macau would effectively showcase that we are a “city of the future” and we could export consulting advice to help other cities implement similar systems.