SOCAR logo. /Courtesy of SOCAR

The mobility platform SOCAR announced on the 30th that its online parking platform, 'Everyone's Parking Lot', achieved a total of 1.26 million sharing transactions through the resident priority parking sharing project in Seoul last year.

'Everyone's Parking Lot' operates a resident priority parking sharing project that allows residents to share parking spaces assigned by local governments during empty hours, and share the revenue generated from this with residents and local governments. The shared revenue for residents is issued as 'Everyone's Parking Lot' points, which can be used for parking payments within the app or exchanged for gift certificates.

SOCAR registered and operated over 7,200 resident priority parking spaces on its platform across 21 districts in Seoul last year. This project recorded ▲620,000 times in 2022 ▲950,000 times in 2023 ▲1.26 million times in 2024 ▲510,000 times from January to May 2025, showing a high average annual growth rate of about 50% over the past three years. This growth is attributed to the spread of a culture of searching and reserving parking lots near destinations via mobile devices, indicating that the use of the parking platform based on the sharing economy is becoming established.

Particularly among the districts in Seoul, areas such as ▲Mapo ▲Seocho ▲Jongno ▲Songpa ▲Yongsan, which are densely populated with business, shopping, and tourism functions, experience high influxes of external vehicles and significant demand for short-term parking. These five areas account for about 65% of the total transactions in the resident priority parking sharing project, demonstrating a strong correlation between regional characteristics and the demand for parking sharing.

The expansion of the resident priority parking sharing project has significantly benefited from the contribution of unassigned parking spaces (non-assigned parking spaces) among resident priority parking spaces. The unassigned parking spaces adhere to the purpose of the resident priority parking sharing project by sharing available parking spaces within local governments and provide higher flexibility and efficiency, especially as they can be opened 24 hours a day (or on a daily basis) when not allocated to specific residents. By utilizing public assets that were previously underused, this initiative leads to visible policy outcomes such as alleviating parking shortages in local governments and increasing tax revenues, along with efficient operation of administrative resources.

Last year, there were 390,000 uses of non-assigned parking spaces, which accounted for about 31% of all usage in the resident priority parking sharing project. As of July this year, SOCAR is collaborating with 18 out of 25 districts in Seoul to share approximately 2,300 non-assigned parking spaces. Among these, ▲Seocho ▲Songpa ▲Yongsan are noted as the areas with the highest volume of non-assigned parking transactions, highlighting their evident effects on resident convenience and improvements to public infrastructure.

Choi Yoon-soo, head of the public base team at SOCAR, said, 'We are expanding the sharing of idle parking spaces in collaboration with various local governments, primarily focusing on major areas in the metropolitan region, including Seoul.' He added, 'Through the digitization and sharing of urban idle spaces, we aim to enhance parking accessibility and convenience for users while contributing to the establishment of sustainable urban infrastructure.'