An hour’s parking in the capital costs more than one hour’s work at the new minimum wage rate of pay!
The minimum wage rate in the UK from April 1, 2017 will be £7.50 per hour for anyone aged 25 and over, yet the average cost for parking up in London could set you back around £8.84 for one hour’s stay – that’s alarming and even more so when you consider the hourly rate for those younger than 25; aged 21 to 24 – £7.05 and only £5.60 for those aged 18 to 21.
A new study was carried out by the taxi and car-sharing app firm, Ubeeqo.com, who compared the charges around inner cities in a number of different countries.
Twilight over London, the second most expensive city in the world for parking
© Copyright Christine Matthews and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
You’re probably thinking that £8.84 for one hour’s parking in the capital is outrageous but in New York, motorists can be expected to pay more than £20 if they want to park up for an hour!
The data was supplied by the car park space finding website Parkopedia. Their database covers 50 million parking spaces across 6,000 cities, throughout 75 countries around the world.
They looked at city centre parking space prices in different countries and worked out the average price for an hour’s stay at each one. They discovered parking up in the UK’s capital costs 18% more than the new £7.50 minimum wage rate set to be introduced in 2017.
Sweden’s capital Stockholm, Athens in Greece and the capital of Norway, Oslo, all charge motorists high prices for parking up in the city – their excuse for doing so is their push for a total car ban in the centre to help improve the levels of air pollution.
Compared to the staggeringly high prices in London and the Big Apple, you can park your car up on a metered car park in Bucharest city centre for a mere 55 pence for one hour’s stay – meaning you could leave your vehicle parked up in the city of Bucharest for 16 hours for the same cost of just one hour in London!
However, the charges in Stockholm (£6.64), Athens (£4.85) and Oslo (£4.51), still fall short compared to what motorists have to fork out in London, including permit holders.
The average cost for a permit in Islington is £545 per year, compared to motorists in the more well-to-do boroughs of Chelsea and Kensington, who are paying out just £214 per annum. However, in Westminster, which covers a large area of central London, a permit is only £141.
Ubeeqo said this “shows just how illogical parking costs can be” in the capital city.
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