December the 19th, 2021 - Zagreb parking is definitely an issue for many, whether it is the cost or finding a place in which to leave the car and then pay for it in the first place. How does it compare to parking in other cities across Europe and the rest of the world?

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, a specialised website for promotions and discounts on online shopping, picodi.com, has produced a report showing differences in the prices of public parking on the street in major European cities.

The analysis of the site reveals how much it costs to park cars in 48 large cities around the world and what are the discounts offered to residents of these areas on a monthly and annual basis.

To prepare this report, they took into account the price of one hour of parking on the street on weekdays in areas with regulated parking zones, as well as special offers for residents of these areas. The results show that the price of parking per hour can vary depending on the demand for parking spaces in a particular place. In general, the farther from the centre, the lower the price, which is logical.

We also know this practice when it comes to Zagreb parking, where the entire centre is classed as a red parking zone, parking spaces in the next "circle" belong to the yellow zone, and those even further from the centre are green zone parking areas. The price of an hour of parking in some European cities is best shown by the price of an hour of parking in the capital of Great Britain, London, where it is rather unsurprisingly the most expensive: up to 9.9 euros or 74.40 kuna, reports Jutarnji list.

In Lisbon, for example, you pay 3 euros or 22.50 kuna for one hour of parking in the centre, and in the French capital of Paris, it is twice as expensive as it is in Lisbon, but also two times cheaper than in the not-so-far-away City of London - 6 euros or 45.10 kuna. In the capital of Spain, Madrid, an hour of parking is slightly cheaper, and costs from 6.70 to 9 kuna in the very centre of the city.

The cheapest city on the scale is the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, where an hour of parking in a regulated zone in the centre costs only 0.18 euros or 1.30 kuna. Residents of the centres of most European capitals, as well as here in Zagreb, have a preferential tariff with regard to their address of residence, and it is interesting that in 6 of the 48 cities looked at, for residents, parking in the centre is totally free.

With 12 kuna for an hour of parking in the centre, Zagreb parking is at the bottom of the list of 18 European cities with the most expensive price of an hour of parking in the centre, and only Sarajevo in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina is cheaper, costing 9 kuna, Warsaw in Poland costs 6.30 kuna and Podgorica in Montenegro costs 4.50 kuna.

Prices for an hour of parking in the centre of various European cities:

London 9.90 (HRK 74.40)

Oslo 7.50 (HRK 56.30)

Amsterdam 7.50 (HRK 56.30)

Paris 6 (HRK 45)

Zurich 5.71 (HRK 42.90)

Copenhagen 5.24 (HRK 39.40)

Riga 5 (HRK 37.60)

Stockholm 4.96 (HRK 37.30)

Helsinki 4 (HRK 30)

Dublin 3.20 (HRK 24)

Reykjavik 2.48 (HRK 18.60)

Vienna 2.20 (HRK 16.50)

Bucharest 2 (HRK 15)

Nicosia 2 (HRK 5)

Zagreb 1.60 (HRK 12)

Sarajevo 1.20 (HRK 9)

Warsaw 0.84 (HRK 6.30)

Podgorica 0.60 (HRK 4.50)

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

Zagreb mayor Bandić plans to expand the zones in which there will be no free parking

There are three parking zones in the centre of Zagreb:

• Zone 1 (red): 12 kn/h, max. 2 h; 100 kn/day

• Zone 2 (yellow): 5 kn/h, max. 3 h; 60 kn/day

• Zone 3 (green): 2 kn/h, no max. waiting time; 20 kn/day

(Updates were made to the original article to reflect the changes in the pricing and zones made in August 2018.)

Parking is paid in Zone 1 on working days, 7 a.m. – 9 p.m.;
in Zones 2 and 3 7 a.m. – 8 p.m. ,
and 7 a.m. – 3 p.m. in all three parking zones on Saturdays.

There are three ways to pay for parking:

• buy your ticket at the parking meter (usually only accepts coins) and place it on a visible place on the dashboard of your car

• buy your electronic parking ticket at Tisak (newsstand which is usually located near all parking spots) by presenting your registration number and stating the desired zone

• SMS parking: send an SMS of your registration number (with no gaps) to the following numbers: (+385) 700101 for Zone 1, 700102 for Zone 2, or 700103 for Zone 3. You will receive a text message to see whether the ticket has been successfully purchased or not, and the ticket is valid for one hour. A very useful feature of this is that a text message reminds you to send another message or move your car before the hour runs out.

Free parking is very rare; there are a few cases where the ownership of the locations is dubious, so the fines aren’t charged (Fijanova ulica, Hruskovecka ulica, the parking next to the police station in Heinzelova ulica 98).

Fines

If you fail to pay for parking your car, or the time that you did pay for runs out, and you find yourself getting a fine, it will be in the form of a payment slip attached to your windshield. The fine prices are actually daily tickets, so 100, 60, and 20 kn for Zones 1, 2, and 3. This is actually not as bad as it might sound, because it gets you 24 h of free parking in that zone, but, understandably, it’s not convenient if you only intended to park your car for a few hours.

If you do get a fine, your registration number is in the system, so this will automatically disable the SMS parking feature, meaning that if you attempt to pay for another hour of parking, you will get an SMS saying that this function is disabled because you have already paid for the daily ticket in that zone.

If you’re renting a car, and you don’t pay for the fine, it will be sent to your rental company and they will then charge it from your credit card, so it’s better to take care of it yourself.

A fine can be paid in any post office within 6 days of receiving it. You can find the locations of post offices in Zagreb on the Hrvatska pošta (Croatian Post) website here.

Indoor garages

There are quite a few indoor garages in the centre, and they are open 24/7, so you should be able to find a spot.

• Gorica, Martićeva 69, +385 1 4650 808

• Kvaternikov trg, Trg Eugena Kvaternika 6, +385 1 4664 176

• Langov trg, Trg Josipa Langa 13, +385 1 4829 888

• Petrinjska, Petrinjska 59, +385 1 4819 447

(the prices in these four garages are 4 kn/h, 8 a.m. – 9 p.m., and 1 kn/h 9 p.m. – 8 a.m.; a daily ticket in the first two costs 30 kn, and in Langov trg and Petrinjska it costs 55 kn; while a weekly ticket costs 70, 100, 250 and 250 kn, respectively)

• Svetice, Ulica Divka Budaka 1a

• Jelkovec 1, 144. brigade Hrvatske vojske 4, +385 91 4819 010

(the prices in these two garages are 2 kn/h, 8 a.m. – 6 p.m., and 1 kn/h 6 p.m. – 8 a.m.; a daily ticket costs 10 kn; while a weekly ticket in Svetice costs 50 kn, and in Jelkovec 1 it costs 20 kn)

• Rebro, Kišpatićeva 12, +385 1 2422 116

(4 kn/h, 7 a.m. – 3 p.m., and 3 kn/h 3 p.m. – 7 a.m.; a daily ticket costs 30 kn; while a weekly ticket costs 150 kn)

• Tuškanac, Tuškanac 1b, +385 1 4834 435

(5 kn/h, 8 a.m. – 9 p.m., and 2 kn/h 9 p.m. – 8 a.m.; a daily ticket costs 60 kn; while a weekly ticket costs 200 kn)

You can find the location of the garages here.

The payment method is the following: you get a ticket when you enter the garage, which you then have to pay for and validate in on one of the ticket machines when you get back to the garage, and finally you take the ticket with you and insert it into the slot next to the barrier before you leave the garage.

All the garages except for Svetice, Jelkovac and Rebro have electrical vehicle charging stations that you can use for free. In addition, multiday parking ticket prices for hybrids and electrical vehicles are 50% lower.

Another useful link if you want to find available spots in Zagreb is Parkopedia.