Beijing has started building an automatic parking garage for public buses to ease the city's parking pressure.

The four-storey parking building utilizes a mechanical system to transport cars to and from parking spaces and part of the facilities can be solar powered.h Covering an area of 14,000 square meters, the building in Fengtai District is estimated to have a capacity for 169 electric buses and 84 passenger cars, 80 percent more than a traditional parking lot of the same size.

Construction of the garage began in mid August and is expected to be completed in 2019.

Beijing is running short of parking space. There are a total of 665 parking lots for public buses in the capital city, but it still needs 4.3 million square meters more. Now more than 2,000 buses are parked on the street at night.

According to a city plan, construction of six similar projects will begin in Beijing this year and another 30 such parking garages will be built in the next three years.