The number of hours people park their cars in city centres has fallen 10% since 2008, according to researchers at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University.

In particular, purpose-built car parks are out of favour, the researchers are quoted as saying by Nos television. They studied the popularity of parking 19 different urban centres.

The drop in parking is hitting local council funding, because they rely on parking charges to top up their budgets. For example, Papendrecht’s car parking has raised €1m less than expected. In Hengelo, parking fees were €300,000 below forecast.

Too small

High fees are the reason why people are avoiding city centres, the researchers say. In addition, city centre parking options no longer meet some motorists’ needs.

In Amsterdam, car parks are not only expensive but the parking bays are too small, according to a second survey carried out by motoring organisation ANWB and quoted by the Parool.

Cars have become wider but most parking bays are no bigger than 2.2 metres across, the organisation says.

The ANWB looked at 60 car parks in European cities and found that apart from Oslo, Amsterdam was the most expensive.