Car Parking
Each car parking space costs approximately £600 per annum to operate:
~ Halifax plc estimates that the average annual cost of parking at £509 per space in Halifax and £771 in Leeds. Hewlett Packard estimates its surface car park construction costs in Bristol to be £800 per space, with ongoing annual maintenance costs of £111.
~ In Nottingham, a city centre parking space can cost around £1000 per year, and when GUS home shopping relocated it saved around £1 million in contract parking charges per year.
If you manage your car parking, you can reduce the amount of parking you need to provide for staff, leading to reduced costs.
How can I Manage Parking?
Setting up a permit parking system for staff can be a useful method of reducing the use of the car for travel to work. However, this can lead to extra on street parking, which should be discouraged, so care should be taken when implementing such a policy.
Where the number of spaces is limited, allocating parking spaces to specific groups of users can be very successful, for instance allocating spaces to users sharing their car for the journey to work. Also, allocating spaces for essential users and visitors is often a useful way of managing parking.
Where the number of spaces is large, reducing the number of spaces by allocating them to groups of users such as car share, visitors, cycling, motorcycling or a drop off point etc. can be beneficial. Access to easy parking can encourage people to drive to work who would not normally consider another mode.
Charging for parking can sometimes be used to provide funds to support other measures, but where free parking is available nearby this can just encourage people to park elsewhere. If you would like more information on Car Parking management, please contact the Travel Plan Co-ordinator.