London world’s most expensive place to park

REX

The average cost to park a car for a day in London is a whopping £42 – making London the most expensive city for car parking in the entire world.

This is according to new research by ParkatmyHouse.com, which ranks the UK capital number one, well ahead of the likes of New York, Sydney and Tokyo.

The next most expensive city to park in is Tokyo – a place so notorious for its lack of available parking space the Japanese have an entire class of city cars dedicated to making it easier. A typical day’s parking in Tokyo costs £38.

After that it’s Stockholm at £32, then Zurich at £31; Sydney and New York come in at £29 and £28, respectively.
 

ParkatmyHouse.com

But if London looks bad compared to the rest of the world, it gets even worse once you start comparing it to other places in the UK. In Manchester, for example, a day’s parking typically costs £12 according to ParkatmyHouse.com, while in Birmingham it’s just £10 – less than 25% of the London price.

What’s more, you need to be careful in London, too. There are now commercial car parks in the West End and City of London charging £75 a day.

London is also home to the world’s single most expensive parking space – a slot in Mayfair that sold for no less than £300,000 last August.

And there’s a luxury car park in Knightsbridge which charges £13,000 a year. But for that you do get extra-wide bays, padded pillars, full security and a monthly valet.
 

AA

The point of ParkatmyHouse.com telling us all this is, of course, to flog its own service – which rather cunningly allows motorists to rent out local driveways, rather than stump up traditional parking fees.

The arrangements vary from just 30 minutes to an entire year, and the firm now has over 500,000 customers, renting directly from ‘hardworking families’. The major goal is to enable people to park cheaply without getting parking tickets, while also reducing the environmental impact and traffic caused by ‘circling’.

The company’s main investor is BMW, which also sees this kind of solution as a way to improve urban mobility.

By CJ Hubbard, contributor, MSN Cars