The true horror of searching for a parking bay in London can finally be revealed – the average driver wastes a total of 67 hours, 26 gallons of fuel and more than £1,000 each year hunting for that elusive space.
The capital has emerged as easily the worst UK city in which to find a parking spot and the most expensive for on and off-street spaces, with the Royal Automobile Club declaring that national spending on parking exceeded £1.5bn in the latest available year, 2015-16, a 4% annual rise.
The research was compiled by the motoring break-down service and other traffic specialists by analysing the price of car parks across the country.
The research revealed that London had the most expensive prices for leaving a car for an hour, with spots costing up to £20, followed by Cardiff at £15 and Leeds at £12.50.
The average cost of parking for two hours in London was £9.80, with off-street parking costing £12.53, nearly twice the national average.
Analysis provided by INRIX, a US firm specialising in traffic information, disclosed that 81% of drivers in London were hit with parking fines last year, with more that 17% feeling the pinch of being booked four or more times.
The report found that fines in the capital were twice as expensive as those in the rest of the UK, at £65 each after the “prompt payment” discount. That meant that London motorists were hit with fines totalling £284m in a year.
The top five councils receiving the proceeds of those fines were Westminster at £76.4m, Kensington & Chelsea at £46.1m, Camden at £38.1m, Hammersmith & Fulham at £35.6m and Wandsworth at £30.4m.
Air Pollution
Report author Graham Cookson, the head of research at INRIX and a visiting professor in public policy at Surrey University, pointed out that the length of time drivers spent scouring London streets for parking contributed significantly to the capital’s air pollution.
“Searching for parking wastes almost half a billion litres of fuel in London every year,” he said. “Not only does this cost the drivers dear but it also generates 1.1 billion kgs of carbon emissions across the capital.
Solving the parking problem will help create a greener London.” That figure is almost 10% of all London’s emissions.
And it is not just the time spent searching for a space. It is also annoying and exhausting. The research found that 70% of Londoners said that finding a parking space was stressful, compared with 64% nationwide.
Parking problems seriously affected London’s economy and the behaviour of drivers, according to INRIX. Its survey found that 49% of London drivers said that at some stage in the previous year they had avoided driving to shops because of parking problems, a higher rate than the survey found in 29 other cities around the world including New York. Some 30% of London drivers said they had avoided driving to a hospital or doctor for the same reason, another high for the 30 cities surveyed.
Asked who was to blame for the lack of spaces, 53% of drivers blamed local authorities — who do very nicely, thank you, from the fines they receive — with another 22% blaming central Government.
A total of 66% of Londoners claimed there were simply not enough parking spaces available.
by Bob Graham
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