Copenhagen residents could pay 100 times more for parking

Copenhagen Municipality is set to hike the price of the residents’ parking permit by as much as 100 times the current fee for some vehicle types.

Published: 7 October 2019 14:06 CEST

Copenhagen residents could pay 100 times more for parking

File photo: Celina Dahl/Ritzau Scanpix

The measure, reported by Politiken, is part of efforts to reduce the number of vehicles in the city.

Steep increases will particularly affect petrol and diesel-powered cars, the newspaper writes.

The change in the price of residents’ parking licences will come into effect from spring 2020.

Residents’ parking permits (beboerlicens) have, since 2017, been price-graded according to the emissions of the vehicle to which the permit applies. Diesel and petrol cars with the most economic fuel ratings for their type fall into categories A+ to A++++.

Those categories are currently liable for annual parking permit fees of just 10 kroner. That is scheduled to increase to 1,000 kroner as of next year.

Meanwhile, vehicles with low emissions ratings face a price increase to 4,000 kroner, twice the current rate.

“The price of 10 kroner for a residents’ parking permit is completely meaningless in relation to the price of a square metre in Copenhagen. It is out of proportion in relation to what we want to get out of the city’s space,” Fanny Broholm, a city council representative and climate and energy spokesperson for the environmentalist Alternative party, told Politiken.

“The most effective measure (Copenhagen) municipality has to reduce car traffic is parking restrictions. So it’s necessary to adjust upwards as much as possible in relation to parking. Permits, parking rates, removal of parking spaces and expansion of paid parking zones. Those are the options we have,” Broholm also said.

Copenhageners will still pay less to park their cars than residents of other major Nordic cities, but more than elsewhere in Denmark, according to Politiken’s report.

A Stockholm resident’s parking permit costs 9,000 kroner annually, while Oslo charges 2,200 kroner, the newspaper writes.

Aarhus permits cost 500 kroner annually – but nothing for electric and hydrogen-powered cars – while the price in Odense is 600 kroner per year.

The parking permit cost for electric and hydrogen cars in Copenhagen will increase from 10 kroner to 200 kroner yearly.

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Bonuses on the new “CopenPay” scheme include a kayak or boat tour, a vegetarian meal, a museum ticket, or an e-bicycle ride — free of charge.

Why does the city want to give away these freebies?

“It is a core task for us to make travelling sustainable. And we will only succeed if we bridge the large gap between the visitors’ desire to act sustainably and their actual behaviour”, tourism board CEO Mikkel Aaro-Hansen said.

The public’s reaction has been “overwhelmingly positive”, although some disappointed visitors “would have liked the scheme to be in place during their stay,” Copenhagen tourism office communications director Rikke Holm Petersen told news agency AFP.

Although the tourist board says it wants the scheme to change behaviour to a more eco-friendly approach, it admits the initiative alone cannot dent the environmental impact of tourism.

More than 100,000 passengers flew into Copenhagen in June, resulting in a much higher carbon footprint than bus or train travel, according to airport data.

“The environmental burden of transportation to and from Copenhagen is much more significant than that of local transportation,” said tourism website VisitCopenhagen.

“We have chosen to limit our advertising efforts to Copenhagen Airport, the central station, and within the city itself, rather than conducting marketing campaigns abroad,” Petersen said.

The tourism office will consider extending the scheme beyond the city — perhaps even abroad — if it proves successful.

“We hope to reintroduce CopenPay as a year-round, green payment experience within the economy and broaden the concept to other parts of Denmark and the rest of the world,” according to the VisitCopenhagen site.