Parking: third EPA-Polis workshop opens discussion about on-street parking provision - presentations now online

The main conclusion of the event is that effective on street parking schemes bring balance to the service aspect and the street regulation aspect. The actual revenue raising is a secondary effect of both these aspects. A good parking service can be rewarded with an acceptibale fee, orderly use of the public domain can be instigated by appropriate price impules or fines in case of disrespect of the regulation.

A second conclusion is the fact that the on street parking scheme has to enable a policy of 'the right vehicle in the right place for the right duration'. Residents, visitors and deliveries have to share the same spaces. The road authority has to steer the actual use of the available capacity, in balance with the off-street offer.

Thirdly, the presentations showed that a lot of cities are in transition with regards to the technologies they use. Text parking, ANPR and scan cars, sensors: new parking technologies are taking shape, and cities have to make the right choices.

Finally, the end user should not be forgotten. The presentation of Angela Francke (TU Dresden) showed that dynamic parking charges are difficult for people to understand, and total cost of parking is difficult to calculate. People who don't understand the system they enter are likely to dissaprove of the system, thus hampering the success of paid parking schemes.

Polis will bring together a set of recommendations and fact sheets with regards to on-street parking and will present this at the Polis conference in Brussels on 4-5 December.

The presentations of the workshop are available here.