Photo: Frans Berkelaar (Flickr)
The Hague introduces €50 parking fee to deter drivers
11 May 2023
by Christopher Carey
The Hague, Netherlands has introduced a flat fee of €50 (US$54.77) to park on certain streets in the city in a bid to deter motorists from clogging its roads.
The pilot programme – which will last a year – will affect roads in the city centre and the Scheveningen beach area, and be levied regardless of the amount of time a driver parks.
Local residents and businesses with parking permits will be exempt from the fee.
“The city has been considering this pilot for a long time. Like most coastal cities we get very crowded during the summer months, and we were getting complaints from residents about not being able to find parking,” Jurriaan Esser, a spokesperson for the City Council told Cities Today.
The scheme will cover five streets in the Scheveningen beach area, and 17 in the city centre.
Enforcement
Drivers who don’t pay the €50 fee – which is on average 10 times the previous charge – face the possibility of their vehicles being clamped and towed away.
The scheme will be enforced by traffic wardens, and information about where the fines are in place will be clearly signposted, the city says.
“The measure is not being taken to raise money; it’s to do something for our citizens,” said Esser.
“We want people visiting the beach area or these city centre streets to park in parking lots, or take public transport or cycle.”
“Of course people are welcome to visit these places, just to consider how they get there.”
The city says it was inspired by similar actions in two other Dutch cities: Delft and Leiden.
Rising fees
Parking fees in the Netherlands have gone up by nearly 30 percent since 2018.
In Amsterdam, the average parking fee is €7.50 per hour, and in Utrecht it is €6.64.
Last year, researchers from Vrije Universiteit – in cooperation with the municipality of Amsterdam – carried out a detailed analysis based on more than 80 million parking transactions.
They found that the number of parking hours of paying visitors has decreased by about 17 percent since the price increase in 2019.
About half of this decrease can be attributed to visitors parking for shorter periods and the other half to visitors no longer parking within Amsterdam.
Parking revenues for the municipality have overall increased by about 40 percent.
Image: Frans Berkelaar (Flickr)
