Bucheon, the satellite city of South Korea’s capital Seoul, is utilizing a blockchain solution under its smart city initiative to discuss the parking difficulties in the area. With participation from the local government and companies, the solution allowed shared parking in the Sangsalmi area of Bucheon.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure initiated the project and Transport under the Smart City Challenge project. The project ensured 280 shared parking spaces, expanding the supply and demand ratio to 109% from the prior 37%. Additionally, illegal parking viewed a decline of 41%.

These parking spaces were secured from residents reserved parking spots and companies, including Technopark. The town also set up a company to run this shared parking service, named ‘Sangsalmi People.’

The service is accessible by a mobile application named CityPass and is underpinned by blockchain technology. Now, the solution will be executed in 13 other areas of Bucheon, which strives to support ‘mobility-as-a-service’ in the city. The initiative is one of the various smart city projects. Nevertheless, 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, in a statement as reported by Yonhapnews.

Earlier this year, Beijing published a blockchain tax invoice for parking lots, assisting individuals and businesses in filing for tax rebates regularly.

Among other mobility projects, Seoul is operating with Canadian firm Graph Blockchain on a blockchain solution for traffic data management.