Car owners in the centre of Amsterdam wishing to park outside their front doors must pay €535 for an annual permit. They are better off in Rotterdam where the 12-month pass costs only €67.20 and allows parking in all parts of the port city, according to research by online car broker Snappcar.nl.

In general, larger cities charge higher parking fees, the Snappcar survey of 133 Dutch cities and towns showed.

The cheapest town for an annual parking permit is the posh The Hague suburb of Wassenaar where residents have to fork out €15.75 a year for the privilege.

Annual parking permits are also expensive in Utrecht (€277), Zeist (€267), Deventer (€267) and Maastricht (€259).

Many provincial towns are more expensive than Rotterdam. These include Almere (€189), Emmen (€240), Enschede (€221), Groningen (€241), Haarlem (€183) and Middelburg (€86).

The wide discrepancy in prices in seen also in the earnings from the parking permits. Amsterdam chalked up more than €200m in 2016, while Rotterdam earned only €67.6m.

Rotterdam is not really a car city, RTL Nieuws says: three of the 10 biggest daily rush hour traffic jams are on roads leading to Rotterdam.