Six months after the change in parking tariffs, the city hall canceled its “parking revolution”. From March 1, 2023, the differentiated tariffs by zone were abolished and a single tariff of 5 lei per hour came into effect for parking lots managed by PMB, with free parking for owners of electric cars and hybrids.

Despite his hopes for a “Parking Revolution”, Bucharest has not escaped suffocating traffic, and the new paid parking spaces are not winning over customers. As expected, the drivers “somehow managed”.

For a change, it doesn’t seem like anything has fundamentally changed, in fact there are signs that peak hours are converging into patterns that span most of the day. One possible explanation is that in our obsession with quantity – the number of seats – and limitations – the new fares, we did not look for the source of the problem. This, as we shall see, is not necessarily a problem of infrastructure, but to a large extent also of mentality.

When trying to decipher the complex problem of parking in Bucharest and the relationship between Bucharest and the car, it is very important that it is first presented in the wider context of urban mobility.

Is Bucharest’s association with the car a simple reaction to the city’s shortcomings or is it a manifestation of a combination of factors? Read in full at Panorama.ro