CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION OF RESEARCH PROBLEM

1.2 Research problem definition

The first part will analyze parking environment with PEST model (Political, Economical, Social and Technological) in China and particular circumstances around airports, and then indicating the dramatic development of airline industry. According to these two factors, the research problem will be defined, aiming to reduce and resolve the adverse effects of the current problems. (用不用说具体的问题)

1.2.1 Chinese Parking environment:
In China:
Political:
"The government often focuses on the dynamic transportation, or traffic rules, but ignore the static transportation or parking" said Ren Bomiao, director of the China Heavy Machinery Association's Parking Facility Committee (2006). Even though some big cities have proposed some solutions of parking problems, such as construction the parking lots, formulating various charging policies and parking standardization (Wu, 1999). There are also some defects in the terms of legislating and supervision of the regulations. Firstly, some regulations are not specific and detailed enough in different parking areas such as hospital, shopping mall, train station, especially airports. Secondly, the enforcement of the traffic law may be not strict and tough enough.

Economical:
China is now the world’s third largest automotive producer and the second largest consumer (Tong, 2010). According to the released data by China’s NBS (National Bureau of Statistics) in 2010, by the end of 2009, the amount of private vehicles ownership is around 26.05 million, increasing by 33.8% than the last year, since 2003, the amount of private cars ownership had been increased by annually 27%. Consequently, the condition of developing car-parks’ construction, as an industry, has become being mature (Shen, 2010).

Social:
As the living standard improving, the traffic modes of resident turn to diversity along with public traffic becoming perfect. Among these, automobile has become the most primarily and friendly-used traffic tool (Liu and Cheng, 2006). There are chaos and difficulties of parking due to the large cars traffic flow around areas, such as airports, hospital, shopping mall, restaurants and stations. This has become a serious social problem which has already influence individual’s daily life.

Technical：
Parking industry has developed in terms of construction and application of advanced technologies. Many multi-story car-parks have been built. Advanced technologies have been applied into the parking system. However, the present technology has not produced the maximum level of effectiveness. In the application process, the parking system still confronts obstacles of integrating advanced technologies into the system structure, services, management and their most optimal combination (Wen, 2007). Lastly, most Chinese citizens, who have been adapted to the traditional parking system, are not familiar with the highly-advanced technologies.

Around airports:
(1) Deficient space utilization:
For example, in BCIA’s parking, there are around 10200 carports (BCIA official website), but most of underground parking space is empty. But surface car parking often faces to saturated conditions. Sometimes, passengers spend longer time on the way from parking to check-in.

(2) High parking charges:
The public has complained that the price is too high. According to the BCIA’s official website, it is free within half an hour, 6RMB for an hour, but when beyond the first hour, every half an hour charges for 5rmb. According to Chen, the National Committee of the CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference), “airports’ parking charges are too high, many private car owners prefer to park along airport highway, which has generated traffic chaos.” (2009).

(3) Inefficient parking service:
Passengers or drivers have to spend longer time to look for vacant spaces and wait for the payment in the exit of the parking.

(4) Inadequate regulations:
Supervision and relevant punishment of unreasonable parking around airports is not stringent enough. For example, around Beijing’s airport, passage way of airport terminal parks large amount of cars which also create traffic congestions (Ye, Liu and Gui, 2009 )

1.2.2 Dramatic increasing development of airline industry:

According to ACI (Airport Council International) global airport transportation report in 2009, the world's ten largest high-growth airports, Chinese airports occupied 8 places. ACI also released the top 10 passengers and cargo throughput, Beijing airports ranks the third at 65.37 million passengers. As the international airport association director of the Asia Pacific region Meiqi Yang claimed, “China’s airline industry maintains a good momentum” (2009).

Take Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) for a typical example, which is the Chinese biggest and busiest airport according to news report.

Table 1: Top 10 Busiest Airport Based on 2007 ACI Traffic figures (millions of passengers).
Preliminary World Airport traffic 2011 by ACI, stating that being the world’s busiest airport, Beijing maintains the second rank.

Parking business in airports is proportional to air traffic flow:
According to the 64 airline companies’ reports in the world, released that in reaction to the increasing air traffic flow, the vehicles traffic flow grows by 14% than the past year, which also makes the parking income increases by 16.47% this year (Zhao, 2011). This growing airline marketing trend indicates Chinese airports’ parking confront great parking pressure because of the sharp development of airline industry.

1.2.4 Research problem:
“Chinese parking environment” and “increasing airline development” lead to dramatic growing airports parking demand in the environment with many parking problems, hence these factors produce severe pressure and challenge for the Chinese airports and parking management department. Hence, our research problem focuses on exploring and throwing out recommendations for the current parking lots around airports, aiming to resolve the current problems and improve airports’ parking system’s performance.

1.2 Research Rationale:
1.2.1 Academic rationale

By analyzing the technical development of airports’ parking system in China and comparing with the advanced and successful examples in developed countries, there is great potential space for improvement in terms of intelligent management systems and advanced equipments.

Current technical situation of parking system:
A car parking system is a mechanical device that multiplies parking capacity inside a parking lot (Petiot, 2004). There are two types of car parking systems: traditional and automated. At present, many parking lots are still replying on the traditional car parking system, which is mainly operated depending on the human resource management system and cannot adapt to the social development. On the one hand, the traditional one relates to heavy labor intensity and low productivity, on the other hand, it may result in cash lose in finance. (Yang，Li and Ge, 2011)

Chinese automated parking system is still at the initial beginning stage, some management problems emerged in the application phase. Firstly, some designing of the new management system is unreasonable, without considering the real circumstances, making some technologies function ineffectively. For example, the new type cannot overcome the difficulties of reading the stained license plate. Some labor force is additionally needed to help the machine read license plate. Secondly, some parking lots are in the stage of blindly pursuing the high intelligence, some equipment breakdown problems emerged because of the immature development of technologies (Bai, 2011).

Gap between the developed countries’ airports’ parking system and Chinese ones:

Technologies: There is still a certain level of gap between developed countries and China in the terms of the central technologies’ designing and manufacturing equipments. Some techniques used by Chinese parking lots, such as Distance reading card technology, are still the foreign countries’ patents. The government has not endeavored positively to create marketing opportunities for independent innovation industry,” stated by the director of Institute of Computer Technology in Academy of Sciences, Guojie Li (2009).

Equipments: Multiple-level and above ground parking garage are commonly used in developed countries. One of the first experimental prototypes of automatic parallel parking was developed at INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) on a Ligier electric car in the mid 1990s (Lgor and Christian, 1998). Automatic parking systems are being developed by several automobile manufacturers. A commercial version of automatic parallel parking was introduced by Toyota Motor Corporation in Toyota Prius in 2003. As well in 2007 the Volkswagen Touran debuted with an automatic parking system developed by Valeo.

Space for improvement:

Improving the parking system’s central management technologies and enhancing the parking management equipments are the two main areas of improving the performance of parking lots around airports in China.

The direction of developing parking administration system should incline to the intelligence and networking. With using the intelligent and thorough management equipments and software, it aims to simplify the human tasks, perfect guidance system, charging and supervisory control, finally, unmanned management is the goal (Hou, 2007).
As for the equipments, many experts insist the development of the three-dimensional equipment, or multiple-level, above parking garages, is supposed to be the first choice. Such facilities, which are space-saving , cost-effective, and convenient, highly secure, are commonly used in developed countries, and they are applicable in China (Liu, 2011).
Finally, constructing a high-powered intelligent parking system has become an inevitable trend. With using some creative technologies, it is possible to make an efficient parking service supporting the airline business, releasing the highly increasing parking pressure around airports.

1.2.2 Applied rationale:
The parking industries in some developed countries and regions have become profitable, and are earning hundreds of thousands, or more, US dollars a year (Yu, 2004). Efficient airports parking delivers tremendous business value to three sorts of stakeholders. Firstly, airport parking is an essential income resource for non- aviation business income to the airports. Secondly, for the professional parking administration department, airport parking is the best pace to test management skills. Thirdly, for the equipment suppliers of the parking lots, airports’ powerful purchasing power and purchasing demand provide considerate market opportunities for the application of the advanced parking management technologies.

For the airports:
In many of the developed countries’ parking lots, 10000 to 20000 parking spaces are located, income from the airports’ parking system has been an significant part for non- aviation business income, accounting for 20% of the whole non-aviation income. However, the parking incomes of Chinese airports are all below 5% (Yu, 2004). This kind gap indicates the great market potential of the Chinese airports’ parking.

For the professional management team of parking system:
Enormous vehicles traffic flow around the airports demands an efficient and effective administration group which not only emphasis on the parking operation management but also on the application of those technologies. These efficient systems will help manager to make temporary strategies according to the collected data. Hence, management team of the parking system will help the parking achieve the most efficient operation system which contributes to the maximum utilization of the available resource. Their professional management skills will be their competitiveness in the parking industry.

For the equipments suppliers of the parking system:
Increasing parking demand stimulates parking equipments suppliers to research and develop the advanced techniques and equipments which contribute to improve their competitiveness. Moreover, tremendous marketing demand from the airports offers great opportunities for the manufacturing group of the parking equipments and development of the advanced technologies. Generally, the price of a set of foreign standard equipments is 3 or 4 times higher than the Chinese ones (Liu, 2011). Hence, if the Chinese manufacturing industry improves their marketing competitiveness, then the parking equipment suppliers would be an industry with considerable market potential.