London’s drivers feel the ‘parking pain’

We waste an average of 67 hours every year in the hunt for spaces
Tight squeeze: 70 per cent of Londoners said that finding a parking space was “stressful”
PA

The vast amount of time and money wasted in hunting down parking spaces across the UK was revealed recently — but nobody suffers as we do in London.

Scratch beneath the headline figures and it emerges that in the capital, drivers waste an average of 67 hours, 26 gallons of fuel and £1,104 each and every year in a frantic hunt for spaces. It makes London the UK’s worst city for parking and the most expensive, too, for on and off-street provision.

Two hours of on-street London parking costs an average £9.80, with off-street costing £12.53, in comparison with average national figures of £5.54/£4.66 respectively, the in-depth report by traffic and transport analysts INRIX reveals.

Other findings are that 81 per cent of London drivers were hit with parking fines last year, with 17 per cent hit four or more times. The report found that fines in the capital were double those elsewhere in the UK at £65 each (after the “prompt payment” discount).

The average number of parking fines in London is 1.1 per driver — almost twice the national average. It means capital motorists are hit with fines totalling £284 million each year.

The total cost of ‘parking pain’ in London is £6.1 billion per annum, says the report, taking into account the cost of searching for parking, overpaid parking and fines.

The amount of time drivers spend scouring London streets for parking also contributes to the capital’s air pollution.

“Searching for parking wastes almost half a billion litres of fuel in London every year,” says report author Graham Cookson. “Not only does this cost drivers dear, but it also generates 1.1 billion kilograms of carbon emissions across the capital. Solving the parking problem will help create a greener London.”

The study, based on 1,700 London drivers — out of 7,000 interviewed UKwide — found that capital drivers spend 12 minutes on average hunting for elusive parking spaces each time, compared to 10 minutes in Belfast, and nine in Bristol, Cardiff and Glasgow.

It amounts to 67 hours spent hunting for parking in London for each driver, annually, at a cost of £1,104 in time, fuel and the “social value” of pumping extra carbon into the air, roughly 1.5 times worse than the national average. Collectively, London motorists spend 263 million hours a year driving around looking for parking spaces, at a combined cost of £4.3 billion or 18 per cent of the total UK cost, says INRIX.

Other findings are that London drivers overpay for parking by 19 minutes each time, the equivalent of an extra 67 hours each, per year. Collectively, London motorists overpay by £380 each a year — £1.5 billion across the capital.

Parking problems hit London’s economy. INRIX says 34 per cent of London drivers gave up trying to reach destinations due to parking problems over the past year, while 46 per cent were late, or missed appointments.

Business suffered after 49 per cent of drivers reported giving up driving to shops because of parking issues. Stressful confrontations arise from parking, too, says INRIX, with 25 per cent of capital motorists reporting arguments with other drivers in the past year, the highest in the UK.

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Meanwhile, 70 per cent of Londoners said that finding a parking space was stressful, compared with 64 per cent nationwide.

Asked who was at fault over parking problems, 53 per cent blamed local authorities — who do very nicely, thank you, from the parking fines and overpayment — with 22 per cent blaming central Government.

A total of 66 per cent of Londoners claimed there was not enough parking, compared with 71 per cent UK-wide.

Half of London drivers believe the worst parking sin is hogging two spaces, followed by wrongly using disabled spaces and blocking access.

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