Zagreb mayor Bandić plans to expand the zones in which there will be no free parking
For as long as he’s been Zagreb mayor, Milan Bandić has slowly but surely expanded those zones in Zagreb where you have to pay an hourly charge to park your car (or, if you live or work within those zones, you are able to purchase a monthly ticket). During that period, the price of parking for those zones has also changed significantly, in both directions, going from extremely expensive to almost nothing, based on the exact point in the election cycle when the decision was made. Then recently a fourth zone was added, in which you can only pay for a full day of parking, no more hourly charges, which also (rightfully) made some people very mad.
Now, new changes are being silently announced: the addition of a new parking zone, going from Jelkovec on the East to Rudeš on the West, and throughout Novi Zagreb, where one hour of parking will cost 75 lipa (we are really not kidding, less than one kuna and around 10 eurocent), and where you will be able to pay the monthly parking fee of 10 kuna (again, not kidding).
Back in October, after it has been happening for decades, mayor Bandić said that it is unacceptable to have first and second class citizens, where ones need to pay the parking in their neighbourhoods, and the others don’t. That’s when the idea of paying for parking in the entire city was first floated. Along with the existing 4 zones we mentioned already, the fifth one will be instated, with low prices, and it seems like the project might start in the Špansko neighbourhood (although, that is somewhat sketchy, since Špansko is somewhat more to the West than the mentioned Rudeš, which is supposed to be the endpoint for the idea, but those kinks will certainly be ironed out as the successful project progresses). Additionally, the first zone (the so-called red one, which you might have noticed if you ever took your car anywhere near the centre of the city) will be additionally expanded, and the second one too, probably, since the second one is so narrow now after the last expansion of the first zone.
No plan for this proposal has been made yet, but once it does, it will be presented to the experts to be analysed, and only then will they approach the media to present the plan, Dinko Bilić, head of the City Planning office told Večernji list, and sources from his office added that it is almost done and should hit Zagreb City Council benches in April.
Another novelty being mentioned is the division of the city into neighbourhood zones, which will forbid people who have purchased a monthly ticket to park anywhere except in the zone where they live and in the neighbouring zones.
The city and Holding (the company running business for the city) have been working on plans to implement such changes for months now, and have discovered that there are some parts of the city where it is virtually impossible to instate such parking charges, because it is virtually impossible to draw the parking lines on the streets, and without lines no charges are allowed. So, we will still have first and second class citizens, just the ratio between them will be skewed.
Such extensions of charged parking zones will lead to the increased need for more people to control if you’ve paid or not. The city administration admits that they don’t have an answer for that either, as the plan has not been completed, adding that they are considering using a machine that will read the license plates to make sure the parking has been paid, but are not sure about that either. In addition to the controllers, many new machines where you pay the fee will be needed, and sources from the city say that currently there are 400 such machines operating in the city, while recently they purchased one hundred new ones, and they plan to move the old ones from where they are now to new areas, and put the new ones in the centre. One might ask why the new ones were purchased in the first place, if the old ones are fully operational and can just be moved to new locations…
We’ll try to keep you informed of all changes happening in Zagreb regarding parking charges, as soon as any changes actually take place.
