Vienna backs down over parking and offers 15 minutes free

The newspaper “Kurier” reported that the coalition of SPÖ and the Green Party in Vienna have decided to introduce a new free 15-minute parking ticket. It will be issued starting in September.

Traffic councilor and vice mayor Maria Vassilakou (Green Party) kept her promise to examine the proposal of the driver’s clubs ÖAMTC and ARBÖ.

They demanded the extension of the existing 10-minute parking tickets as those tickets were not suitable for quick purchases.

However, the city of Vienna will not abandon the free tickets or work with the classical parking meter instead.

Günther Schweizer, state managing director of ARBÖ Vienna said that this was an enormous success for the club: “It is a big deal for us that the vice mayor made a big compromise after the troubles about the short-term parking zones”, he said.

The prices for the remaining short-term parking tickets will remain unchanged. It costs one Euro for half an hour of parking, and four Euros for two hours. The prices increased significantly in March 2012.

In the future, price increases will be measured on the so-called threshold value (which is five cents for parking tickets).

If the consumer price index changes significantly so that the threshold value has been exceeded or fallen short since the last change, the price of the tickets is either increased or reduced.

The next deadline for the control will be 30 June. If the threshold value is higher than five cents, the prices will increase on 1 January 2014.