Motorists in Denmark last year sent over a billion kroner in total to municipalities in the form of parking fees, broadcaster DR reports based on a review of municipal parking revenues in 2023.
The 1.1 billion kroner in total received by municipalities comprises paid parking, permits and fines. It is a record amount for a single year.
Motorists’ organisation FDM, which conducted the review, said the annual amount had been “increasing steeply throughout the ten years we’ve been following it” in comments to DR by its senior consultant, Dennis Lange.
Unsurprisingly, Copenhagen is the city with the highest parking revenues at 649 million kroner. It is followed by Aarhus, Frederiksberg, Aalborg and Odense, all of which saw parking revenues go up last year.
FDM was critical of the trend and suggested that municipalities were introducing paid parking with the primary purpose of raising money.
READ ALSO: How do you appeal against a parking fine in Denmark?
“We can see an increase, not least in recent years, where municipalities are openly saying, ‘Well, we need money in the municipal accounts. What can we do? Let’s put up paid parking’, which is illegal,” Lange told DR.
“You can have paid parking but it must be for traffic, not financial reasons,” he added.
Traffic laws allow local authorities to charge for parking if the charge has the purposes of limiting the number of cars or to cover the costs of constructing and maintaining the car park.
FDM said it had filed a complaint with public body Ankestyrelsen over one municipality in particular, Helsingør, after a member of the Helsingør town council told local media that a new paid car park was away to raise funding for the municipality.
In comments to DR, Helsingør Municipality’s elected councillor Malthe Jacobsen denied this was the case.
“We did it to get fewer cars in the city centre. Because we can see that traffic is just increasing. More and more cars are coming and it is getting harder for people to find a parking space,” he said.
Jutland town Silkeborg received 12 million kroner from parking last year, an increase of 49.5 percent from the year before.
Councillor Peter Sig Kristensen in Silkeborg said parking fees were for “a healthy town, a calmer town, while also ensuring there are parking options so we can support local business.”
Decisions by cities to introduce more paid parking are not surprising according to Ismir Mulalic, an associate professor at Copenhagen Business School’s Department of Economics who has researched parking and transport economy.
“We are getting more and more cars and they have to be parked somewhere. Land is getting more expensive, especially in the cities, so it is not surprising that payment is being taken for a limited resource like a parking space,” he told DR.
Member comments