Disc parking which can make a one-hour parking zone as short as thirty minutes, possibly resulting in an unjustified parking ticket. On March 31, 1979 the conference of ministers of transportation in the European Union decided that a European standard should only use designs with a single clock face. The standardized clock disc was introduced as federal law in Germany in November 1981, and similar designs were adopted in other European countries. From 1998 the old parking disc designs began to be abolished. France set the last date to 2007, while in Switzerland (not an EU member) the EU parking disc design
The High Cost of Free Parking leads to inaccurate rates. He then goes on to argue that the methods used to determine these rates amount to "pseudoscience" because he says the methods used to determine them appear scientific, but he argues they are often arbitrary. The book goes on to discuss about the cost of constructing and maintaining parking and the differences between public and private parking from a planning perspective. Shoup then delves into a number of case studies from cities around the world. He then discusses the costs of people spending time searching for parking which he terms "cruising". Shoup then recommends some methods