Parking Fees

This got brought up last night on ZDF news (public TV, Channel Two) here in Germany.

If you are fortunate to live in a smaller town or village in Germany....you don't need to worry about parking on streets and paying a fee.  If you live in a highly urbanized zone (Berlin or Munich for example), it's a different story.

Cities in Germany have the right to establish a yearly fee for regular parking on a public street.  This fee can differ from town to town.

Right now....the regular cost of public parking is between 10.20 Euro and 30.70 Euro a year.  There's a national law to deal with limits on this.

Well, there's chatter going on....about allowing cities to raise the fee.

The rumor on the amount?  240 Euro a year (to be set MAX amount).   Yeah, it's extra hefty, even in my opinion.  That would translate into roughly 290 US dollars a year.

The vast majority of cities (in my humble opinion) will never go to that extreme.  Cities like Hamburg or Berlin?  They might.  Part of this would be some effort to convince people to get rid of cars, and only use public transportation, bikes, or scooters.  Yeah, the environmental 'push'.

Most of the cities in the 250,000 to 400,000 would probably raise their public parking fees (yearly) up to around 100 Euro.  Part of this game, if you think about it.....is simply to make up for city income.

Pain on the lower-income folks?  Yeah.

This is still in the discussion stage, and the Berlin political crowd could suggest some stepping mechanism....saying that for the next four years, it's a limit of 100 Euro a year, and then go to 140 Euro a year by 2025.  My guess is that this will happen, but you can anticipate by 2030....it'll hit 250 Euro a year. 

For the topic of discussion....there are 1.2 million cars registered in Berlin, and I would take a guess that two-thirds of them have an apartment parking lot (under the building) or a house car-port.  So you might be talking about 400,000 cars in the city, which use public streets to park upon.  So you'd be talking about 100-million Euro of income for the city.....this max amount was established.