Put up a parking lot

 600,000 new cars were sold in 1999. The development of car parks has failed to keep up with this

 Parking cherry not yet ripened

  demographic changes are also a major factor: “People are moving into the cities,” says Ms Krasnodębska. “New housing developments, for example, are bringing people in, and this type of investment also brings quicker returns than the development of car parks. Investors are naturally more willing to put their money into ‘faster’ sectors.”So when the car parking business does finally mature in Poland, what form could this take? Traffic and parking problems vary from city to city. In Kraków and Poznań, for instance, towns which have historic centres, the idea that is being promoted is that of further prohibition of vehicles from the old town areas, combined with new car parks on the edge of the new pedestrianized zones. In Poznań, traffic has been banned from the city centre for 6 months now, and at the time of the publication of this issue of Eurobuild Poland, a new underground car park with 542 parking spaces was to be opened, developed by Auto-Park, part of the French Eiffage group and at a cost of PLN 35 mln. This has been done as a type of public private partnership, according to which Auto-Park will have the rights to manage the car park for 39 years, before handing over its ownership to the city. The price for using the car park is PLN 5 for 2 hours or PLN 50 for the entire day.

  The Polish capital is not laid out the same way as these other cities. As Warsaw is still without a ringroad, traffic has no alternative but to pass through the city centre.

Warsaw is dominated by the pavement parking system. The city currently has around 23,000 spaces, of which 1,200 are metered. The council is planning to extend metering to 13,000 spaces. Currently, revenues from metered parking amount to PLN 25 mln each year, 60 pct of which goes to the car park operators, 30 pct to the city security guards and a mere 10 pct to the city authorities. The profits made by the operators remain controversial, as it is usual in other major cities for the bulk of this to go to the city and towards municipal projects. There is also a curious legal situation in that no–one is sure whether fees can actually be charged. So in some places people pay for their parking spaces, in others not; in some places, payments are collected, and again, in others they are not. Evidently some new legislation is needed soon so that both motorists and operators know where they stand.

 Park my ride

  Warsaw’s municipal transport authority (ZTM) have a few park&ride schemes in the pipeline too. Car parks are to be constructed at 2 metro stations: Marymont (400 parking spaces) in the north of the city, and Wilanowska (290 spaces) in the south. In May, construction firm Mostostal Warszawa signed a PLN 8.27 mln contract for the work at Wilanowska, scheduled to take 20 months.

Another scheme which is yet to be proposed for Warsaw is that of a ‘congestion charge’, similar to the one pioneered in London and later adopted by Stockholm. In London, the charge consists of a payment of GBP 8 for driving into the city centre. CCTV cameras film all vehicles entering the zone. If a motorist has not paid the charge, then a fine is posted to them. Such schemes also require the development of car parks around the restricted zones.

 The car is my castle

   little the car park development  Poles are enjoying their new found ability to purchase cars, but according to Piotr Naszydłowski of Central Parking System, their mentality is still “my car is my castle.” Tadeusz Hapon of Capital Parking concurs: “We are still a poor country and a car is a very powerful status symbol for us. We would much rather drive where we want than use public transport.” Things are not helped by the lax enforcement of parking laws.