

Parking rates

Driving costs

Which cities charge most for parking?

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Readers' comments


Mohammed El-Sakka

there sems to be a mistake in the ranking of cities, look at Amesterdam and London's costs. Not only this, allover the charet, the ranking needs to be re-calculated

Jeroen Hellingman

Parking in the inner city of Amsterdam is terrible expensive, that is, if you can find a parking spot at all. The idea seems to be make the price so high that people who want to pay still have a reasonable change to find a spot.

Plenty of cheaper alternatives exist. You can park your car in large garages near the edge of the city (for example under the Olympic Stadium) and get up to five return tickets for tram or bus to the center for 6 euros per day. Trams are reasonable efficient in Amsterdam, and will get you to your destination in about 20 minutes.

Other cities must have similar arrangements.


As Iyke mentioned earlier, Calgary Alberta has some of the highest parking rates in the world downtown at up to $700 a month for prime spots, a somewhat strange fact considering the wide open space in every direction from the city. He doesn't seem to understand, however, that the city only controls prices in its own lots, which are the minority. In my view, the city would be stupid to charge less than the private lots are doing. Similarly, if the lots are filling up every day (as they are) then clearly the prices aren't too high. The real reason for the high prices in Calgary (and everywhere that it's expensive) is the limited amount of parking downtown. The city decided way back when that it was going to require fewer spots per capita (I think it's something like .4) in an effort to discourage driving and increase use of public transit. And it would seem to have worked: the Calgary LRT is one of the most heavily used in North America at about 270,000 boardings a day, and I would say the majority of downtown workers (myself included) use public transportation or car pooling to get to work.

Mad Hatter

It would be interesting to see which parking attendants and councils are the most hated around the world.

In London, the business strategy is to make the rules so complicated, you cannot obey them – hence massive profits for the councils.

For example, I parked my car in Westminster, walked across the street, bought a sticker, put it in my car.

When I came back 45 min later, I had a penalty charge notice. The smiling parking warden told me – “Oh, see that sign 15 feet off the ground?. It says on this side of the street, you MUST pay by mobile phone….” My ticket wasn't valid!!!

Another time, I contested a penalty charge notice (3 minutes over). They got my name wrong, the registration wrong, my address wrong. The adjudicator was 20 minutes late for the hearing – no apology from him – I had to pay £100. We get screwed if we mess up.

Confusing rules, changing irregularly, and the poor driver pays.

They will ticket ambulances, busses, road diggers.



Are the monthly rates perhaps the discounted rates that garages offer for a month commitment, rather than the total of the daily rates?


Just noticed something: why are there fewer days per month in Oslo than in London? Similar daily rate, but less than half the monthly rate. Don't have time to see whether the year is longer or shorter in other countries ...


Hello georgeopen. I'm looking forward to you next humorous intervention. Great stuff: where do you get it from?

For everyone else, I'm thinking of Moscow. I don't know of any meaningful quantity of off-street parking there: it's all on-pavement parking, and I mean pedestrian pavement. Tow trucks exist to remove offenders, but they need the presence of a police office to legalise them. That gives them a bribe opportunity, but it also reduces the economic viability of the tow trucks, since they can deal with far fewer offenders. Try bribing a London traffic warden and see where it gets you!


Just a point, you forgot Casablanca, Morocco in that survey, according to July 2009 exchange rate with the US dollar, that would be :
2.49 USD per day
44.88 USD per month*
That makes it more expensive than India!


Dubbleoj, thank you for your comments.
I have not seen Zeitgeist but it sounds as if I certainly should.
My philosophy is not to be compared with others unless theirs completely agrees with mine.
My view of the suggestions I made are very down to earth and practical, as you say the trick is to improve the quality of life.

Nobody could attempt to do better than others except in achievements to benefit everybody, because every one would have everything practical that they could want.
To take an example televisions would be produced in two or three factories, updated as technology advances in say ten sizes and twenty colours. Everybody would have as many as they wish.
Copy this across all needs and nobody has less then anybody else.
There would be no ordinary crime because there is nothing to steal that you cannot have.

The quality of life would be dramatically improved because there would be no bills to pay.
everything is free, people could concentrate on helping others and enjoying their own lives.

With a little thought one can see, that any practical problems in slowly implementing this way are easily overcome.

If you see any problems, that you think are intractable, please, let me see them.


About the article in general, i find it curious the economist would compare all these places in one single currency instead of adjusting it by PPP somehow. THat's a nono from the get go.
Adding the local price of fuel (times a certain amount of lts) would have been nice, as well as insurance.

I wouldn't know how to factor it in, but some sort of way to measure how easy it is to buy a car in each place. Number of average salary to afford a particular car, or something of the sort.


@ Rockdoctor

"The obvious reason for the high daily rates (the line 0-70) for parking fees in most of the expensive cities is not a product of environmental policy or high taxes but the result of a wealthy population, occupying a small area with little space for parking."

You don't know what you are talking about. The dutch were pretty smart about this (although Amsterdam's size does help).
They tackled three big, long term problems with one simple solution:

Polution, obessity and traffic with bikes.

"I note that Sao Paulo is near the bottom of this list. I wonder what the parking costs in Brasilia are? This, after all, was a city designed for the car."

You've obviously never set foot on SP. That city wasn't designed for anything. SP grew too much too fast, and "adopted" periferical towns the best way it could. It had absolutely nothing to do with planning nor design.


We need to take a broader look at things.... High number of cars is cause of concern in most of the modern cities nowadays. Apart from paying a high parking cost, we spend so much on GAS and above all pollute the environment.

I don’t think parking cost or for that matter any cost related to personal transportation should be decreased. Albeit more focus should be on improving public transport system.
Singapore is a good example.... residents there have to follow Vehicle Quota System (VQS). This system allows the authorities to control the number of cars out there.
Plus they also have a fantastic public transport system. Although this setup is due to limited space in Singapore but it can be a good solution for transport and pollution related problems for many cities.


I am from Chennai, I do agree its cheap but when it comes to some private places say shopping plaza, Cineplex they charge you more. The charge is on hour basis. I do agree when you convert them to $ you will find it cheap.


The governmental cost of urban traffic is not covered appropriately by a gas tax since much of the cost is incurred by parked and slow moving vehicles. A parking fee could go a long way too address such an externality.

I am a major limited government guy, but I know a valid externality when I see one.

The Capitalist

I know just the place Georgeopen's theories will work! To paraphrase the late, noted economist and businessman Thornton Mellon, it's a place called "Fantasyland."


odd that people can get emotional about a mundane issue. State-imposed parking fees as an ordinary regulatory measure, to discourage traffic. Regulation aside, urban space is nearly always a scarce resource. Parking demand, like traffic, expands to fill the space allocated to it. But if business people need to use their cars in the city, they are free to do so, at their own expense.

DW Marks

In Australia, Brisbane is likely more expensive than Sydney, a product of a powerful local government that is car averse.


The obvious reason for the high daily rates (the line 0-70) for parking fees in most of the expensive cities is not a product of environmental policy or high taxes but the result of a wealthy population, occupying a small area with little space for parking. You might also want to factor in the geographical settings of each city. The top six cities are restricted in growth because of the sea in one direction and in the cases of Oslo, Tokyo and Sydney by mountains in the other. Amsterdam is built on partially reclaimed land and cut through with canals. The parking fees for New York probably refer to Manhatten so being an island unoccupied land will be scarce. London is the only city where Government policies in the form of greenbelts and congestion charges has restricted growth away from the sea. At the bottom end of the scale is Mumbai with a large population again on a coastline but with a low average income hence much fewer vehicles and a lower demand for parking space.

The age of the city is another factor. The only US cities on this list are New York and Honolulu which are both on islands. No other US city which has grown and been planned mostly in the 20th century appears to be expensive enough to make the list. Many European cities are blessed or cursed with planning dating from the middle ages. The last time anyone did any serious planning in London was during the Roman occupation. These cities were never built with cars in mind so what limited space that is available is going to be expensive.



The Sydney data must be an average of CBD AND outer suburbs. CBD parking averages $15-$25 an HOUR these days -- more than double what it was prior to the 2000 Olympics, boosted when virtually all on-street daytime parking in the CBD was eliminated and the car ark owners jacked up prices and now the state government has doubled the CBD carpark space levies. This kind of behaviour used to be known as 'extortion', but since the rules are set by the state government, it's been considered legal.


Parking generally follows supply and demand. In cities with little supply (and high prices) it is because the real estate can generate a higher return when used for purposes other than as a parking stall.

Some of those cities with expensive parking also have good public transportation... so parking and the substitutes for parking compete and the equilibrium price is just what parking is worth. If you don't believe it, then start a parking garage in New York and try and cash in on the imbalance. Don't ask me to invest, however.

In most cities the cost of parking is bundled into the cost of goods and services. So while charging high parking prices is a tariff, retail goods and services purchased where the high cost of parking is bundled are effectively taxing economic activity and discouraging investment, too.

Read "The High Cost of Free Parking"


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