Uiryeong-gun, "Allowing Disabled Parking for Pregnant Women" ... Best in Regulatory Innovation

Space Needed for Pregnant Women Boarding and Alighting
Reorganization of Parking Spaces for Transportation Vulnerable Groups

An idea to convert parking spaces for the disabled into parking spaces for the transportation vulnerable, so that pregnant women can use them, was selected as the best case in this year's Uiryeong-gun regulatory innovation contest.

On the 20th, Uiryeong-gun, Gyeongnam Province, selected three excellent cases from the '2024 Public Regulation Improvement Task Contest' conducted to discover and improve unreasonable regulations in the daily lives of residents.

A disabled parking space in an apartment complex in Uiryeong is always empty. Provided by Uiryeong County

The winning entries were selected from 30 submissions based on creativity, feasibility, and effectiveness, after review by related departments and evaluation by the Regulatory Reform Committee.

The best idea was chosen as ‘Converting Disabled-Only Parking Spaces into Transportation Vulnerable Parking Spaces.’

The proposal suggested expanding the target of disabled parking spaces to transportation vulnerable parking spaces so that pregnant women over 20 weeks can use them, as disabled parking spaces are often vacant.

In particular, Seo-young Choi, the policy proposer from the Extinction Crisis Response Promotion Team, reflected the daily inconveniences she experienced as a pregnant woman in the policy.

Choi said, “Pregnant women in late pregnancy need extra space when getting in and out of vehicles. Regular parking lots are always full, and even if there is a space, it is narrow and always inconvenient.”

She added, “I hope a pilot operation can be conducted first in public parking lots in small rural towns and townships where the usage rate of disabled parking spaces is low. If a separate transportation vulnerable parking sticker is issued along with the existing pregnant woman sticker, it could be implemented immediately without a large budget.”

Mayor Tae-wan Oh said, “Good policies come from experiences in daily life and awareness of problems. I strongly agree with this life-experience-based policy proposal,” and added, “We will discover and improve regulatory innovation tasks that can solve chronic difficulties to revitalize the local economy and enhance convenience in daily life.”

Meanwhile, the other excellent ideas included ‘Expanding Authority to Lift Agricultural Promotion Areas’ and ‘Expanding Usage of Local Love Gift Certificates to County-Level Areas.’

The county plans to review the ideas submitted through this contest and propose improvements to laws or systems to central government ministries, and improve local regulations through review by the responsible departments.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.