Illegal parking is one of the major causes of traffic congestion. Among many ways to mitigate illegal parking, a high level of direct traffic enforcement has been shown to have the strongest impact. Traffic enforcement must invest substantial human resources in patrolling and issuing parking tickets for illegally parked cards. The work load is overwhelming and efficiency is low since the illegal parking occurs almost everywhere in urban areas. This study tries to help traffic related officers ease their work load but minimize illegal parking by implementing social media networking. Social media in China has a significant number of users which covers nearly every urban area so that the service users can be public police officers to make traffic flow better in the city. The aim of this research is to develop the smartphone-based application and see its possible potential. The first part of this paper will describe the WeChat based application, which collects information on illegal parking cars from the public. It includes user interfaces, an automatic warning system, a parking navigation system, and data visualization. The second part demonstrates the process of the practical operation in Suzhou, China. Finally, the authors conclude the advantages and further development of this application. In addition, features of the illegal parking problem and parking planning problem in Suzhou are discussed.
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