THE BEIJING MUNICIPAL COMMISSION OF TRANSPORT issued a report on local parking places on Wednesday, which said by the end of last year, the city's urban districts had parking space for 3.82 million cars, while 3.84 million cars were parked at night. Beijing News comments:

The report seems contrary to what car owners in Beijing say - for long they have been complaining about the lack of parking space during the day.

The city needs to take proper measures to ensure all available parking spaces are optimally utilized. For example, in many residential communities, the parking spaces can be sold to "outsiders" whose workplaces are in the neighborhood, so that after the community residents leave for work in their cars, their parking spaces, instead of lying vacant, can be used by the "outsiders" to park their cars.

Also, some car owners illegally install devices on public parking spaces to ensure only they can use them. Besides, the number of parking places in Beijing's public buildings is as high as 1.47 million, but only 580,000 are used at night, because many of those are not open to the public.

To solve the parking problem, the illegally installed devices on public parking spaces should be removed, so that other car owners can use them. For that, however, law enforcers have to swing into action.

And government agencies and other public institutions should open their parking lots for public use, which will allow people who live in communities nearby to park their cars there at night.

Some may worry how to keep track of the number of cars and manage the parking lots, but technology has already taken care of that problem. Almost every parking lot today has smart devices that automatically detect how many cars have entered and how many parking spaces are available. What is needed is to use them more efficiently.