G7: Budapest’s parking problems should not be solved with garages and parking garages

In the inner part of Budapest, parking in public spaces is associated with significant problems both from the point of view of cars and the use of public spaces. Car users are often faced with the fact that they can only stop after a long search, and due to the space requirements of parking spaces, there is no space for trees, green areas, wider sidewalks, or bicycle lanes. The idea suggests itself that if there were more private parking lots (primarily underground garages or parking garages in the city center), it would be easier to park – both on public and private land – and a lot of public land would be freed up, which could be used for other purposes. What is the problem with this idea?

First of all, car users park in public spaces primarily not because there are not enough private parking spaces, but because public parking is much cheaper for residential car users who mostly use public parking spaces due to the discounts provided by local governments. While public parking for residents is annual depending on the district it costs a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of forintsthe price of private parking is typically HUF 40,000 to 60,000 per month. In addition, with a residential permit, you can park in the whole or a significant part of the district. For this reason, some of the private parking lots in the city center are unused, the parking garage under Akácfa utca 60, for example, was demolished a few years ago.

Private parking everywhere

There is no shortage of private parking lots in most areas, because the law requires it for newly built houses, and local governments encourage their construction. While typically only every second to third household in the inner part of Budapest owns a car, the regulation governing the location of private parking lots is valid until 2024 government decree (OTÉK) by 2021, at least one private parking lot had to be built for every apartment (and not to mention every hotel room).

In some districts, for example in Erzsébetváros even this was not enough, in the case of larger apartments, even 2-3 private parking lots were required by 2021 (one per 50 square meters). And although he inherited OTÉK TÉKA government decree based on this, only one parking space should be created for every 1.5 apartments in metropolitan residential areas, and local governments can require fewer parking spaces if there is a good reason, in practice most of the local governments still adhere to the “one apartment – one parking space” principle. Due to oversupply, investors they can only sell the parking spaces in the underground garage, created at a cost of around HUF 10 million, at a lossand because of this, the apartments are sold more expensively.

The municipalities are forcing the construction of private parking lots because they fear that if there are fewer private parking lots, the residents of the new apartment building would park on the street, which would worsen the parking situation in public areas. However, the parking situation in public areas is so bad because local governments offer huge discounts to residents who use cars by reducing the annual parking fee by 70-100 percent. That is, the municipalities with discounts worth hundreds of millions of forints per district first, they create parking problems in public areas, and then, in order to avoid an even bigger problem, they force people moving into new residential buildings to pay additional costs of many millions.

Municipal subsidies

If there are already many unused private parking lots, why not use them to reduce crowding in public areas – several municipalities may think. But this is only possible if local governments provide significant support to those who are willing to park on private land, giving up their parking permit on public land.

Terézváros, for example, provides a subsidy of HUF 300,000 per person per year to the 120-130 inhabitants who is willing for HUF 15-30 thousand per month to park in a parking garage instead of in the public area. District V provides much more support, around HUF 750,000 per person per year (274 car users in 2024), who they can use the parking garages for free. The XIII. The district provided approximately HUF 217,000 a year per car “Garage for stickers” within the framework of the program called, parking in the Westend parking garage is provided to about 50 residents, and in addition, 25 spaces are also provided in the parking garage owned by the district of Lehel Csarnok.

The XII. district received 84 parking spaces in the Királyhágó Residence underground garage from the investor even in the previous cycle, which monthly for HUF 30,000 net can be used by the district residents. In a sense, this includes the II. district BKK pass discount also, in the framework of which those who park in private areas (possibly in non-paid public areas) receive an annual BKK pass worth about HUF 100,000 per year.

The local governments protect the spending of tens of millions, or in the case of District V, more than 200 million forints, by saying that the bus driver pays for parking in free parking spaces. But this is a dream for which there is no evidence. The majority of parking spaces in public spaces are occupied by local residents from the outset, who park for free or for an annual fee of a few tens of thousands of forints. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to park in the city center during the day in most cases, so it is not at all certain that the number of people parking in public spaces in the city center would increase if more empty parking spaces appeared.

Primarily, the reason why more people do not pay for parking in the inner part of Budapest is not because there is no space, but because the parking fee determines a certain level of demand. Since this demand depends on many things (parking fees, economic situation, number of constructions, etc.), it is almost impossible to show how the possible release of a few hundred parking spaces in a district affects the hourly parking fee income.

But even if a significant part of the local government support were to come back from the higher parking revenue, the fairness of the support is still very questionable. Since the above subsidies can be used by anyone who owns a car, it is assumed that a significant proportion of well-off residents will receive subsidies in order to cause fewer problems with their parking than before. This is very unfair to those who have not previously caused problems in public areas.

In addition, the efficiency is also questionable. It is easy to imagine that, for example, many of the car users in District V would give up their car even for a subsidy of less than HUF 750,000 per year, since they would be better off if their car use needs were met by using the subsidy, for example, with community car use or occasional car rental.

Liveable cities

In addition to unfair and wasteful subsidies, an even bigger problem is that private parking lots significantly hinder the development of pedestrian zones, the public spaces that contribute most to urban livability. Because while public parking lots can be eliminated, private parking lots cannot, and moreover, their accessibility must be ensured. Therefore, where there is a private parking lot, or on the streets leading to it, pedestrian zones cannot be created, or only those that are regularly used by cars at any time of the day. This problem is very evident in Belső-Erzsébetváros, where, due to the numerous underground garages and parking garages, it was only possible to create rabbit-tail sections of pedestrian streets by because of them, the traffic in other streets increased.

As long as the underground garages and parking garages remain, it will not be possible to create a continuous pedestrian area in this area, typical of the interior of more and more large western cities, in the future.

In addition to pedestrian zones, the design of school streets is also made difficult by private parking lots. In about 40 percent of the 340 schools surveyed in the investigation of the Air Working Group, it is not possible to create a school street that is permanently closed to traffic, primarily because of the underground parking garages or parking lots near the school entrance, since access to them must be ensured. But in these cases, even the functionality of temporary school streets depends on whether the users of private parking lots are willing not to leave home during the closing time (if they have the opportunity to do so at all).

The vast majority of private parking lots also impair the livability of non-attenuated streets, since in most cases you have to cross the sidewalk to use them, which is basically an area closed to traffic, where pedestrians can ideally walk calmly, observe, and chat. If, on the other hand, they have to pay attention to potentially appearing cars, it assumes a completely different type of sidewalk use, and children on such sidewalks also need to pay extra attention.

Here, it is worth turning back to the subsidies presented above, which municipalities provide to users of private parking lots. With the support, the local governments ultimately help the survival of private parking lots that cause a lot of problems in the inner city districts, and which without support would probably change function sooner or later, as happened with the parking garage under Akácfa utca 60.

The impact of private parking lots on the livability of individual neighborhoods depends fundamentally on their location. Private parking lots that open onto the main road or onto a public area that is easily accessible from the main road, or those whose access does not require crossing a sidewalk, are much less problematic and may even have a positive effect. Unfortunately, the majority of private parking lots located in the inner districts of Budapest are not like this, their entrances can only be reached through small streets and by crossing the sidewalk.

The way to a livable city in the inner part of Budapest is not by encouraging the construction and use of private parking lots, but rather by suppressing them.

The legislation requiring the establishment of private parking lots should be changed and subsidies for the use of private parking lots should be abolished. Instead, the change of function of private parking lots in small streets should be supported, especially in those streets where a pedestrian zone can be imagined in the long term. The problem of parking in public areas should be dealt with by applying higher hourly parking rates and reducing public discounts, as well as by promoting the use of public cars, since one public car can replace the use of 5-15 private cars.