Clearing ‘zombies’ out of parking lots
Print Edition
EVEN more annoying than finding someone illegally parked in your allotted space is to pass by parking lots filled with “zombie cars” while driving around in circles looking for somewhere to park.
“Zombie cars,” said a Qiyunmeidi housing estate resident surnamed Liu. “That’s what we residents call cars that haven’t been driven or moved for a long time. Nobody knows who or where the owners are. They are like dead cars.”
For Liu and others in the housing estate, it used to be a pain to find a parking spot. But no longer. Authorities in Qibao Town have towed away all the zombie cars from 21 housing estates and two villages.
Some 61 cars have been removed since the crackdown that began in March.
“It’s a huge pleasure watching these zombie cars being removed.” said Liu. “They have been around for years. It is hard enough to find a parking spot nowadays without them making it worse.”
Dumped cars
The removal is the first of its kind in Shanghai. The zombie cars have different histories. Some are just dumped because they are broken down and too expensive to fix. Some may have been abandoned so that owners could take the license plates and use them on newer cars. Local residents don’t much care about explanations. They just want the cars gone.
“We wanted to take action, but unfortunately it was beyond our scope of responsibility,” said Zhao Meiling, a member of the local neighborhood committee.
Since there was no way to contact the owners of the abandoned vehicles, the cars just sat there, month after month, year after year. Residents habitually lodged complaints to neighborhood committees and estate managers. No action was taken.
“These vehicles are legally owned by someone and technically private property,” explained Jiang Yun, a lawyer with Shanghai Heqin Law Firm. “Under the law, neighborhood committees and estate management companies could not legally deal with the matter. But based on the situation as it exists, the occupation of public areas by these vehicles affects the lives of other residents, so it is appropriate for relevant government departments to take action.”
Zhu Zhengguo, chief of Comprehensive Management of Public Order in Qibao, said part of the problem was determining which department had the authority to act.
“It’s a new problem that didn’t belong to any agency,” he said. “In the end, we established a special team for this particular problem and negotiated with local police stations. Eventually, we resolved this issue together.”
Fifteen days after a notice of intent to remove the vehicles was posted on an estate wall, all zombie cars were towed away. The owners of the vehicles can claim them back with proper identification. Unclaimed cars will be towed to scrap yards.
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