Bucheon, the satellite city of South Korea’s capital Seoul, is using a blockchain solution under its smart city initiative to address the parking problems in the area. With participation from the local government and companies, the solution enabled shared parking in the Sangsalmi area of Bucheon.
The project was initiated by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport under the Smart City Challenge project. The project secured 280 shared parking spaces, increasing the supply and demand ratio to 109% from the previous 37%. Additionally, illegal parking saw a decline of 41%.
These parking spaces were secured from local residents reserved parking spots and companies, including Technopark. The town also set up a company to operate this shared parking service, called ‘Sangsalmi People’.
The service is available through a mobile application called CityPass and is underpinned by blockchain technology. Now, the solution will be implemented in 13 other areas of Bucheon, which aims to promote ‘mobility-as-a-service’ in the city. The initiative is one of several smart city projects. However, it was not clear if other projects such as public WiFi would use blockchain at the back-end.
“As the innovation and performance of the smart city challenge project, which local governments, businesses, and residents participate together, has been clearly demonstrated, financial support and technical consulting are provided to make it a new growth engine for nationwide expansion and overseas exports,” said Kim Hyun-mi, Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport as reported by Yonhapnews.
Earlier this year, Beijing issued a blockchain tax invoice for parking lots, helping individuals and businesses to file for tax rebates easily.
Among other mobility projects, Seoul is working with Canadian firm Graph Blockchain on a blockchain solution for traffic data management.
