Monday, July 20, 2009

Most Expensive Places To Park Your Cars







Colliers International, a property company, has come out with an interesting survey on global parking rates. European cities have some of the highest daily parking rates, with Amsterdam and London coming out on top. Tokyo is the most expensive place to leave your car outside Europe. Honolulu is second behind New York among America's cities. Drivers in London fork out the most for a monthly unreserved space. The cheapest parking in the survey is in India, where a spot in Chennai costs 96 cents a day.

I should really not complain about my RM150 ($41) monthly parking fee. Parking can be a major cost factor in determining whether people drive to work or not. In HK, its very easy to own a car, it costs a lot more to park it.

Parking is one thing, the other is toll rates. While we bitch about our tolls, many cities have "restricted zones" that charges according to the time of entry. The thing to bear in mind is that if you are going to make it prohibitive to own and drive a car to work, make bloody sure the infrastructure and alternative modes of (affordable) transportation are available.

5 comments:

domino said...

One has to take note that you cannot just compare/analyse the parking rates or any rates for the matter without taking into consideration the earning/buying power of the people. Same goes for the availability of public transport. That is what our gov always does when they try to justify a price hike of utilities/petrol/tolls etc.

Btw, I just realised that no one actually comments on your blogs? Any reason that you know of? Because most of the topics you post are good discussion areas.

Thanks.

domino said...

I feel, we should never compare or analyse parking rates or any other pricing matter without considering the earning/buying power of the people. The same applies to the fact that you mentioned the significance of having a matured and operational public transport infrastructure. These comparison are always used by our gov to justify price increase for tolls, utilities etc. Its rubbish.

Btw, I find that no one actually comments on your blog. I find that a bit funny as the titles you post are actually interesting points for discussion.

Colin said...

An alternative like Perth is to limit parking spaces in the city. Most will use public transport if they isn't a place to Park. Outside the CBD parking in plentiful

xatomic said...

reminds me of the joke where a banker collateralize his ferrari to the bank for a small amount of loan, coz the interest is cheaper than the parking fees hahaa

Ciki said...

Most of the cities with exhorbitant parking rates, also have very efficient public transportation.

Here in Malaysia, not only is there no planning for such infrastructure (except when the ruling party wants to reward cronies), the system is crappy at best (have you seen the terrible condition the buses and taxis are in??).

This has to do with attitude. The people in Malaysia are not proud of their work. It's only a means to the end. Kais pagi makan pagi, kais petang makan petang (to live from hand to mouth). The don't take responsibility for their work and are not proud of their job.