Parking in Bratislava's centre can be an expensive affair. (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
At the end of July last year, street parking in the centre of Bratislava became part of a new city-wide parking scheme, known as PAAS. Visitors, i.e. car owners who are not registered as resident in the city centre, must pay €2 for one hour of parking between 8:00 and 24:00 and €1 per hour on weekends and holidays. Several businesses located in the city centre have criticised the parking fees, saying they are too high and that they are even considering leaving the centre, the SITA news agency wrote.
The city council is unmoved. It has responded by saying that it is not considering the introduction of a special tariff for employees working for companies based in the city centre. Instead, it is recommending that such people use public transport or park-and-ride facilities.
“Such a pricing advantage is not being implemented, to our knowledge, in any developed city in Europe,” said Peter Bubla, the city's spokesperson, as quoted by SITA, adding that another solution may be to rent off-street parking lots, or to use park-and-ride facilities or public transport. “A motivation to do this could be, for example, a public transport contribution from employers for their employees.”
Main objective – parking for residents
The city council recalls that one of the main objectives of the new parking scheme is to improve the availability of parking spaces for local residents. In Bratislava, as in other cities, regulated parking is based on the residency principle.
“We are therefore primarily concerned with providing the best possible parking for residents,” said Bubla.
The experience from regulated zones in Bratislava suggests that such regulation is working.
Tariff zones
Tariff bands for individual parking zones across the city are charged at hourly rates varying from €0.50 to €1, €1.50 and €2. The inclusion of a zone in a specific tariff band depends on how many visitors park in each given zone, i.e. the pressure on parking capacities there. The city centre is, predictably, the zone where most visitors want to park.
“That’s why it was included in the tariff zone with the highest tariff, i.e. €2 per hour,” said Bubla.
As a result, parking for the duration of a typical eight-hour working day in the city centre would cost an employee at least €16.00.
Thousands of parking lots
The central 'SM0 Centrum - Panenská' zone is bounded by the Danube waterfront, and Palisády, Dostojevského Rad and 29. Augusta streets. There are approximately 3,600 regulated parking within this zone.
The city took over the parking spaces in the centre following a legal dispute with BPS Park, the company that had previously managed them. The city initiated a court case and the court, in a preliminary judgement, ruled the contracts under which BPS Park had managed the spaces to be invalid. BPS Park continues to maintain that the steps taken by the municipality are unlawful.
Before the SM0 zone was introduced, BPS Park charged approximately €1.80 per hour between 8:00 and 18:00 for street parking in the city centre.
