By Cathy Lam, Flora Chio, Iris Lei, Tony Cheong

With the limited land resources in Macao, the city with a population density of 18,600 people per square kilometer, the number of licensed vehicles and of casino shuttle buses are growing rapidly every month. At the same time, the transportation services in Macao cannot satisfy the needs of citizens, making citizens prefer to drive their own cars on routine trips. All these conditions are threatening both the traffic on the roads and the parking spaces in Macao. And Macao really looks like a city that is populated by vehicles.

On average, every month, there are around 1,000 new licensed vehicles. Based on this estimation, if the rate stays steady, the licensed vehicles in Macao are going to reach 301,000 in 10 years. However, there are yet no effective new transportation systems to encourage citizens to use more public transportation or to provide enough parking spaces for the drivers in order to ease the parking space problem.

According to the Statistics and Census Service, by the end of August 2012, there were more than 110,000 motorbikes and more than 9,000 light automobiles. The number of new vehicles in the first eight months has already exceeded the number of yearly record of 2011. This terrifying number is growing at a rate of approximately 5% every year. However, the space used for new traffic is just growing at around 3% every year. Although by the end of 2011, the number of parking spaces for motorbikes grew to around 50,000; it is still not enough for 110,000 motorbikes, which is double the legal parking spaces. Thus, more than half of motorbikes are “forced" to park at some illegal areas, bearing the risk of being fined. And spaces for developing parking areas are becoming less as we can see. At the same time, the space for parking light automobiles in turn decreases as the space for motorbikes increases. In the long term, there is a very pressing pressure for the creation of parking spaces in Macao.

In the Central District of Macao, right next to Santa Rosa de Lima English Section, there is a particular area for placing smashed cars and motorbikes. This arrangement seems inappropriate because the area is near the city center, one of the busiest districts in Macao. During the traffic peak hours every day, traffic jams always occur. If the area can be restructured as a parking area and open for the public, it may solve the problem mentioned above to some degree.

Louis Io is a regular car driver working near the Central District. “I have noticed this area for a while. It sounds odd why it was arranged to place ‘dead cars’ instead of ‘live cars’. Why didn’t they consider using the mass areas in Coloane to place the smashed cars?" Io said.

Secondly, numerous parking areas are occupied by second-hand car sellers, gradually, becoming a “second-hand car selling market". This problem has long existed in several districts in Macao, especially in the Areia Preta Zone, where many garages and auto-care centers are concentrated. A car driver, Miss Lei complained, “As the parking space in this district is insufficient already, now they even occupy a part of it, I feel so helpless and really hope that the government could solve this problem as soon as possible." In addition, some workers wash cars over there, it’s just like the parking in front of their shop is their workplace too. Another citizen, Mr. Fong, said that it is very inconvenient and dangerous for the elderly as it is slippery.

On the contrary, the car sellers argued that they inserted coins for the parking meter hours accordingly. One of them said, “As it is a public parking space, everyone should have the right to park their cars there, I am not doing something illegal," A shop owner in the Areia Preta Zone said that they could sell approximately four to five cars each month by parking in the area. If not, they could hardly run the business as there is limited space in the shop and the rent has kept increasing. It is totally not workable to rent another shop to place cars. As there are such large contradictions between both parties, the initiative action of the government is crucial and significant.

There is no doubt that casinos shuttle buses have occupied a significant part of our traffic capacity as private-junket vans or gigantic “lucky vehicles" ferry passengers back and forth. It is an absolute necessity for casinos to provide good service especially the “pick-up" service to their customers. They cannot keep their customers, gamblers and staff waiting. VIP customers even enjoy cross-broader pick-up service. For provide their “warmest" service, casinos also provide many shuttle bus routes to tourist sites for customers to choose. The frequency of the shuttle buses is very much like our public transport system. Try to imagine that there are 33 casinos operating approximately three different routes, then it will be around 100 different routes from each arrival port to their casinos or from their casinos to diverse Macao sight-seeing spots, to serve more than 28 million visitors a year. It may not sound like an exorbitant number, but in just a 30-square-kilometer city inhabited by more than half a million people, over 200,000 active vehicles do sound a bit overwhelming.

One of the reasons why people in Macao prefer driving private cars and motorbikes to taking public transportation, like buses, is that the public transportation system in Macao is still imperfect. During the traffic peak hours every day, people always complain about the low frequency of buses. It causes the constantly increasing number of licensed vehicles in Macao because people still prefer driving even though the cost is higher than taking public transportation. Although there has been a new bus company operating in Macao since August 2011, the quality of the public transportation system did not improve much. According to the survey report Macao Resident Satisfaction Survey of New Bus Service conducted by the Association of Macao New Version in 2011, 34% of the respondents reported that the quality of the bus system did not have any change, and 30% of the respondents even reported that the system is worse than before.

Although the government has started developing the Macau Light Transit System, the stations are not primarily for local citizens for daily use. Somehow the system seems mainly for the convenience of tourists. If the government still does not propose a policy for the overall traffic system in Macao, it is hard to imagine how our next generation can live in such a dense city.