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Parking space costs billion dong?
Automobile manufacturers are happy because they can sell many cars as people’s income has been increasing. However, local authorities are not because arranging enough parking space for cars has become a headache for them.
The parking fee sky high
Some people joke that watching over cars is the most profitable business nowadays, because car keepers do not have to have high degrees to be able to earn big money. They can earn billions dong a year just by allowing people to park cars on their land.
The increasingly high income has prompted people to replace their motorbikes with cars. However, before deciding to buy one, people have to think first about where they will park them. This has become difficult these days, especially when the land price has been escalating, and there is not much space left in the big cities to arrange parking lots.
Just several days ago, Golden Westlake announced a sky high price for parking places for its residents, ranging between 751 million dong and 2.145 billion dong. However, to many people’s surprise, the price proves to be relatively attractive, because parking cars in other places costs three million dong a month
Similarly, a parking place at the building at No.93 Lo Duc street costs500 million dong.
Though the Hanoi’s authorities have stipulated that the maximum car keeping fee applied for up-to-9-seaters, 10-16-seaters, 17-29-seaters and over-30-seaters vehicles are 500,000, 600,000, 700,000 and 800,000 dong a month, respectively, the actual fees set by car keepers are much higher.
The actual fees applied in the areas of My Dinh, Pham Van Dong and Pham Hung streets are hovering around 1-1.5 million dong a month. the fee is much higher for the central areas (In Hoan Kiem district), at 1.8-2 million dong a month.
As the land fund reserved for parking places is limited, people have tried to turn school yards into parking places.
Trung Kien, a driver for a director of a company in Tay Ho district, said that he has luckily found a parking place at the nearby nursery school yard for which he has to pay 800,000 dong a month. Kien can put the car there only at night and he has to take it away early in the morning, before the children come to classes.
“If I parked the car in another place, I would have to pay 30-50,000 dong per night,” he said.
Le Hong Quan, who lives in Cau Giay district, related that at first, he decided to park his car, brand new Lacetti, right on his alley near his house. However, the car got scratched just after several nights, and now he has to look for another place to park his car.
According to the Hanoi Police, by the end of April 2010, Hanoi had had 310,000 cars. Every month, the Hanoi Police grants car ownership registration certificate to 4000 cars. In the 10 districts in the inner city, there are 350 parking car points. If unlicensed parking points are included, the total parking areas in Hanoi can provide parking slots for 10,000 cars only.
This means that the other cars either are put on school yards, hospitals’ yards or rolling on streets, thus making the traffic jam more serious.
A source said that an enterprise in Hanoi is planning to set up two multi-storey parking areas on Ngoc Khanh and Tran Quang Khai areas. However, the high tentative keeping fee of 1.5 million dong a month will be a big burden to car owners.
vietnamnet, Dien Dan Doanh Nghiep
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