Paid parking has saved Amsterdam from chaos, says ‘parking pro’ Jos van Ommeren

No flowers, no cake, he won’t live long. The sixtieth anniversary of paid parking in Amsterdam goes almost unnoticed – the parking meter simply has few friends. And yet that is not right, says Jos van Ommeren. “Imagine if we gave the opponents of the measure their way and abolished paid parking in the city with effect from tomorrow. After just a few hours the chaos would be complete. Traffic jams everywhere: there would be no way through.”

Van Ommeren is professor of urban economics at the Vrije Universiteit. He conducts research into the effects of policy on the housing market, the labor market and mobility in the city. He owes his nickname parking pro to his special interest in the parking market. “About fifteen years ago I wanted to do something with it and I discovered that there was hardly any scientific attention for the subject. There was also a major lack of data. That surprised me, because there is no city in the world without a parking policy.”

Now it is about Amsterdam – and in particular about the growth that paid parking has taken since the first parking meters were installed in the city center in 1964. Sixty years later, the city council has announced that in two years’ time, parking spaces in public spaces will have to be paid throughout the city. The measure seems to be the final step in the changed thinking about the car in the city. Van Ommeren: “In the 1970s the city center was still full of cars and buses. We can no longer imagine that.”

From facilitating to directing

In the first decades after its introduction, paid parking was mainly intended to facilitate car owners. The parking meters ensured that they could also find a spot in the busy city center. “From the 1990s onwards, policy has become guiding instead of facilitating,” says Van Ommeren. “From now on, paid parking had to contribute to optimal use of public space and to promote traffic flow. Concepts such as accessibility, safety and quality of life have been central to policy ever since.”

An important impetus for parking policy in the city was new legislation, which in 1991 placed responsibility with the municipalities. “Before that time, a parking fine was really a fine for an infringement. The proceeds went directly to the treasury, a reason for the city not to invest too much energy in developing expensive parking policies. It was the time of the Amsterdammertjes, a rather clumsy, purely physical measure to prevent people from parking their cars on the sidewalk.”

That changed when the parking fine turned into an additional assessment of municipal taxes. The money now flowed into the municipal treasury and made it possible to set up a whole system for control and enforcement and to think carefully about the place of the car in the city. Van Ommeren: “Public space is a scarce resource, especially in the busiest parts of the city. It goes without saying that the use of that land does not have to be free. How much should be paid for this is a political choice.”

Progressive college

This became clear once again in 2018, when a progressive council took office in Amsterdam with clear views on the place of the car in the city. This was also noticeable at the parking meter. “In previous years, the price of an hour of parking in the city center increased by 20 cents annually,” says the parking professional. “The new council immediately increased the rate by 50 percent, from 5 euros to 7.50. The number of areas for paid parking was also expanded. Clearly a completely different wind was blowing.”

The increase in rates was a political choice, but scientific research subsequently made it clear that the measure also had a great effect. Van Ommeren: “The research supports the high parking prices in Amsterdam. After the 2018 increase, the number of hours parked fell by 20 percent and the number of kilometers driven in the city by 2 percent. That’s a huge amount.”

The measures nevertheless aroused great resistance. This is partly inevitable, but is also related to the Amsterdam approach, Van Ommeren believes. “It is customary in Amsterdam to impose parking measures from above. In a city like Utrecht, residents of neighborhoods were allowed to vote on the introduction of paid parking. People who were bothered by the growing search traffic asked for measures. So the question came from the residents. Then it feels very different when parking meters appear in the street.”

From street to street

Another point is that in Amsterdam paid parking is usually introduced uniformly for large areas, while the problems can differ from street to street. “In Rotterdam and The Hague, outside the center, we examine more or less street by street whether measures are necessary. The advantage of this is that it is clear to everyone that paid parking is used to solve a problem. If you do it in one big fell swoop, even in places where no problems are experienced, then the cash cow’s accusation lurks.”

From 2025, parking spaces will have to be paid for throughout Amsterdam. Is that the end of the matter? Van Ommeren doesn’t think so: “The future could look very different than we think now. We are approaching the era of the self-driving car, which could also drastically change the parking market. If Amsterdam residents can use such a car without a driver for their transport for a few cents per kilometer, the need for parking may even disappear completely. Then we can use the garages as accommodation for nightclubs and indoor playgrounds.”