Car Park Management

Car park management refers to the systematic management, planning, operation, surveillance, and maintenance of car park facilities, encompassing access control, security, parking fee collection, and parking guidance systems. As a core component of urban static traffic management, it serves as a critical driver in enhancing the utilisation efficiency of parking resources.

Current Industry Landscape

China's car park management sector is grappling with severe structural imbalances. As of 2024, total motor vehicle ownership nationwide exceeded 453 million units, leaving a deficit of over 80 million parking bays. In contrast, the utilisation rate of existing bays stands at merely around 40%. This mismatch—where motorists struggle to find available bays while vast numbers of parking spaces sit idle—highlights poor resource allocation as the industry's primary bottleneck. Furthermore, roughly 30% of urban driving mileage is attributed to motorists cruising for parking spaces, compounding city traffic congestion.

Against this backdrop, the industry is pivoting from "volume expansion" to "optimising existing capacity and efficiency". The ultimate solution for parking management lies in revitalising dormant bays, refining day-to-day operations, and driving value-oriented management.

Key Management Functions

Car park management encompasses the full end-to-end journey, from vehicle ingress and egress to on-site guidance. Access control forms the backbone, leveraging automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems for seamless vehicle clearance with recognition accuracy exceeding 99.9%. Fee collection management covers functions such as time-based billing and outstanding fee recovery, with integrated on-street/off-street enforcement, ETC-assisted payments, and legal recovery avenues already deployed across numerous cities. Parking guidance and reverse vehicle search utilise video navigation cameras and dynamic digital guidance signages to help motorists swiftly locate vacant bays and their parked vehicles. At Zhengzhou Financial Island, for instance, deploying this system reduced the average bay-hunting time during peak hours from 8 minutes to under 2 minutes.

Smart Parking Management

Smart parking represents the core development trajectory of car park management, integrating technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, big data, and cloud computing to deliver intelligent, full-lifecycle parking bay management. Its technical architecture comprises a perception layer (geomagnetic sensors, video recognition hardware), network layer (5G, NB-IoT), platform layer (cloud computing, big data analytics), and application layer (management and service portals for authorities, operators, and motorists).

BeiDou high-precision positioning technology is also playing an instrumental role in modern parking operations. Leveraging the BeiDou spatio-temporal intelligent operating system, Tianmen in Hubei has retrofitted over 8,000 on-street parking bays and 75 enclosed car parks across the city. Equipped with BeiDou satellite signal antennas and AI cameras, mobile patrol vehicles automatically cross-reference parking bays with vehicle registration numbers, refreshing the occupancy status of hundreds of bays in just 30 minutes.

Evolution of Operational Models

Car park operations are transitioning from conventional manpower-heavy setups to platform-based, digital-intelligent models. Cloud hosting services employ remote cloud concierges to slash labour overheads by 30% to 50%. Platform-based operating models consolidate on-street and off-street parking assets, achieving professionalised management via joint operations that have matured across multiple regions. As of April 2026, 245 prefecture-level cities and above, alongside 855 county-level administrative regions nationwide, have rolled out intelligent on-street parking management.

On the commercial front, tailored "preferred parking" packages are gaining traction. At Zhengzhou Financial Island, operators introduced differentiated packages—such as weekday daytime passes, overnight season passes, and long-term parking passes—paired with bundled EV charging perks, boosting the parking bay turnover rate from 0.8 to 1.64 rotations per day.

AI Integration and Future Trends

Artificial intelligence is profoundly reshaping car park operations. Next-generation AI parking solutions drive precise supply-demand matching through four key pillars: "AI commercial strategy formulation + traffic acquisition and revenue generation + existing stock frequency boosting + EV charging operations". Over the next two to three years, parking systems are poised to transition from user-initiated queries and reactive system responses to proactive, intelligent services tailored for both operators and motorists.

Looking ahead, car park management will advance along three key trajectories: first, comprehensive digitalisation, establishing unified management across on-street and off-street assets alongside integrated parking and EV charging; second, deep AI integration, advancing from smart diagnostics and strategy recommendations to end-to-end automated operations; and third, a pivot from management to commercial value creation, transforming car parks from basic "spatial infrastructure" into "value engines" that unlock ancillary revenue streams and value-added services.