Motorists in the Southern Capital have received a useful addition to their toolbox for getting around our city on four wheels. Say goodbye to driving around in circles forever looking for a parking spot. That’s the theory, anyway.
It’s called “Ning Ting Che” (宁停车) and its a WeChat mini program which has the potential to put an end to the increasingly-frequent parking headaches experienced by Nanjing’s drivers.
The mini program which has just been launched will find for you the nearest car park with available spaces, tell you how far away it is, how many spaces are available and provide GPS instructions for getting there.
The list of available spots presented is also colour coded. Red for a car park that is almost completely full; blue for partially full and green for “loads of spaces”.
It’s certainly a very useful mini program to have knocking about on your phone. But there’s a catch. Not all the city’s parking spaces are included. In fact, there are only 1,369 car parks in the system, together offering a total of 150,000 parking spaces.
Ye Bin, Director of the Parking Facilities Management Office with the Nanjing Urban Management Bureau, explained the status of the new initiative to reporters for the Yangtze Evening News.
A full 2 years in the making, the mini program makes use of that being called “one network unified management”, that has managed to sync the status of a significant proportion of car parks in the city’s urban area in such a way that the mini program can provide drivers with real time updates.
It works too, as The Nanjinger has tested earlier today. The caveat, however, is yes, the car parks in the system are a little few and far between.
The system also makes no mention of roadside parking, which to be honest, would be an insurmountable challenge. But one that full 5G coverage would have the potential to address.
Nevertheless, for the drivers amongst our alert readers, or the Very Important People in our midst with drivers to do the work for them, the new mini program will certainly turn out to be a life saver one day.
It is also planned to add additional functions in the future, such as “Finding a Charging Pile”. Download the app to your phone (or your driver’s) by searching WeChat mini programs for “宁停车” .
