Free car parking is a joke

Listening to some people, you’d think that being able to park their car for free wherever they go was an inalienable human right. I find the insistence that storage for private vehicles should be provided freely (often at public expense), and the outrage when it isn’t, bizarre.

I’m not the only one. Comedy writers recognise the absurdity, skewering characters whose car-logic defies any semblance of sense. In an episode of the superb BBC comedy Detectorists, Becky is trapped in a dull staff meeting, dreaming of escaping her life as a primary school teacher to volunteer in Africa, when a conversation about parking takes a surreal turn.

HEAD TEACHER: Can I ask that none of you double park in front of the school. Mr. Daley needed to get to Asda yesterday lunchtime and couldn’t get out.

TEACHER: Where are we supposed to go then? I’m having to park further and further away and walk the rest.

HEAD TEACHER: But you only live a mile away Fergus.

TEACHER: Exactly, it’s hardly worth me driving in at all. We need to sort out more parking spaces.

The idea of creating more parking spaces (presumably in this case by taking away some of the school’s playground) for staff who could easily walk is comically ridiculous. Or it is to most people, anyway. I’ve been in plenty of real-life conversations where these sorts of proposals have been put forward seriously.

Even in car-dominated America, writers poke fun at this attitude. In the sitcom Seinfeld, George admits his insistence on searching for free parking, when he could easily pay for a space in a garage, is mad. But he argues to Elaine that it’s beyond his control:

Nobody in my family can pay for parking. It’s a sickness. My father didn’t pay for parking, my mother, my brother, nobody. It’s like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay when, if I apply myself, maybe I can get it for free?

That quote comes from an episode of the show entitled ‘The Parking Space’. The scene ends with George missing out: another driver pulls into the space before him because he is too busy lecturing Elaine on his philosophy of car parking technique.

So why is free parking such a powerful talisman? My theory goes like this. When someone has a car and drives it everywhere (which our society makes easy), it becomes impossible to imagine how anyone else could live differently. They see plenty of other people in cars. And since they do not consider themselves rich (because there is always someone richer) they conclude that they are living the life of an average person. 

The least they can expect, they reason, as citizen average, is to be allowed to go wherever they like, whenever they like. They pay their taxes (well, most of them) and they shouldn’t have to pay more to park their car when they arrive. Besides, they’re putting money into the local economy aren’t they?

Not much, it turns out. The argument that free parking will save our high streets is wrongheaded. Research in Bristol by Sustrans showed that shop owners overestimated the importance of car-borne trade by a massive 100%. Conversely, Living Streets’ Pedestrian Pound report concluded that making places better for walking could boost trade by 40%.

Meanwhile, Paris is removing half of its 140,000 on-street parking places. Not making them free; removing them. Just think about the space that Paris is getting back. And that’s only on-street parking. John Siraut, director of economics at consultancy Jacobs, has done some calculations on free off-street parking in the UK. Writing in Transport Extra, he argues:

There are probably 30 million off-street parking places in the UK, the vast majority of which are provided free of charge to users. They take up around 30,000 hectares. If they were all charged for we could perhaps free up 50% of them, giving enough room for 375,000 urgently needed homes, at present average build densities, or to grow enough wheat for 150 million loaves of bread a year. The real cost of free parking is a lot less homes and a lot less food. 

So who benefits from all this space devoted to free parking? There’s a myth that car ownership is somehow a great social leveller. Everyone has a car, the story goes, so making a place accessible by car is the same as making it equally accessible. Free parking is the ultimate expression of inclusivity.

But this narrative is written from a position of privilege behind the steering wheel. Not everyone has access to a car. In England, 22% of households don’t. And 29% of disabled adults live in households without access to a car. Free parking doesn’t do them much good. Or the 32% of the poorest fifth of households in the UK who have no access to a car. But it does benefit the richest fifth of society, because all but 7% of them have cars.

By prioritising and encouraging driving, free parking also does nothing to tackle pollution, sustain public transport or encourage active travel. Wouldn’t it be great if even half the effort that went into moaning about paying for parking went instead into campaigning for things like this, which help everyone? Now that would make me smile.