TAIPEI, TAIWAN — A few days ago, I wondered how parking tickets were handed to offending motorists in a large Asian metropolis. I had my answer the day after, while walking around in the vicinity of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in central Taipei.
It was a middle-aged lady on a bicycle! Despite the ragged look of our supposed parking agent, she carried an electronic device like our local agents, and issued tickets that were very real.
I don’t know if it’s a standard practice there, but a regular bike is the perfect vehicle for such work in a crowded city like Taipei, which narrow streets would not suit very well cars that make frequent stops. A scooter probably would not have been an economical (or ecological) choice to cover small areas, especially to fine consecutively parked vehicles. If you look more closely into the agent’s basket, there was an EasyCard, Taipei’s transit chip card. Now, the surgical mask: for health or privacy purposes?
This article was crossposted to Comme les Chinois.
4 comments
“Like our local agents?”
Parking tickets in Montreal that I’ve seen are nowhere near as hi-tech. They’re written in pencil, with carbon paper. 19th century technology, nevermind 20th.
You are right! Maybe I was thinking of policemen issuing traffic tickets… I can’t remember whether their devices had the integrated printer.
Oddly, I know this because I was looking at a parking ticket just a day or so ago, walking down Decarie Blvd in “downtown” Saint-Laurent.
There was a car illegally parked in a handicapped spot right outside a store that sold wheelchairs and the like. Real classy.
Anyway, I lifted the onion paper to see how much it was: a mere $42. I thought it would be more, given the egregiousness.
Actually, the ticket that was issued by the cycling lady was not a “parking violation ticket” but a “parking fare ticket”, which you can usually pay at any 7-Eleven convenience store. If you look carefully in the first picture, you will find that there’s white line drawn on the ground with no parking meters in sight.
I remember when I went back to taiwan earlier this year, the parking fare was really cheap compared to our North American standard, a joking NT$12 per hour, which is around CDN$0.35. What’s really cool about this system is that you can pay at any 7-Eleven in taiwan. So, I parked in Kaohsiung and ended up paying in Tainan a week later. Interesting, isn’t it?