Parking fees in Switzerland – Parking is too expensive in many cities – News


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How high can parking fees be? To answer this question, price monitor Stefan Meierhans has made new calculations.

For example, Meierhans determined the land costs, production costs and management costs of a parking lot. Short- and long-term parkers should bear part of these costs. But how much is too much?

Stefan Meierhans

price monitor


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The lawyer with a doctorate worked from 1998 to 2003 in the General Secretariat of the Federal Department of Justice and Police. He then worked as a political consultant in the private sector. In 2008 he was appointed Price Supervisor by the Federal Council. He is a member of the board of directors of the canton of Bern. Meierhans is married and lives with his family in Bern.

“In my view, you shouldn’t make a profit with fees,” says Meierhans. “My new model shows that such high fees cannot be justified given the costs. That’s why I think cities should lower prices.”

According to the price monitor’s new cost model, annual subscriptions of over 400 francs are generally too high for long-term parkers, regardless of whether these fees are charged in a small town or in an expensive and large city like Zurich. Blue or white zone parking spaces are on public land that already belongs to the general public. For this reason alone they cannot be compared with the significantly more expensive private underground car park spaces.

Resident parking card holders are mostly people with smaller wallets.

Above all, however, too high fees for public parking spaces are antisocial, criticizes Meierhans. “The rich have their own garage or parking space. Resident parking card holders are mostly people who work shifts or have special jobs and have a smaller wallet,” he continues. Therefore, he strongly advises the authorities to reconsider their parking fees.

Meierhans does not rule out that he himself will approach cities with very high prices again. These cities include all those who charge more than 400 francs an annual fee for a long-term public parking space. For example, Lausanne with 500 francs, Bern with 492 francs and Winterthur with 710 francs. Zurich also wants to increase the fees from 300 to 540 francs.

This is how the cities react to the complaint


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In Zurich, people are unimpressed, says SRF domestic editor Iwan Santoro. According to the administration, the CHF 540 is a government proposal. Parliament has the last word and will probably wave the proposal through, since the left-green majority wants everything to do with cars to be more expensive. In Winterthur, where one of the most expensive parking tickets in Switzerland is sold, they do not want to reconsider the decision. In fact, the electorate approved the increase at the ballot box two years ago. In the Zurich city of Wetzikon, on the other hand, they want to at least study the price monitor’s new calculation model. The small town is also most likely to fear a phone from Meierhans, after all they require an annual parking card of over 1,000 francs. The electorate was never able to comment on this.

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