Free parking is not the solution when you want to liven up the city center, says executive director Leena Vuotovesi, who led the parking experiment in Oulu.
In Oulu we tried free parking in the city center and the results were surprising. Parking spaces were used less when they were free than when they were paid.
“Based on the experiment, it can be said that free parking is not the solution to making the centers more accessible,” says the executive director of Oulu Liikekeskus ry, which ran the experiment Leena Vuotovesi. Oulu liikekeskus ry’s members include, among other things, entrepreneurs from the Oulu city center area.
In the experiment, paid parking was changed to disk parking on two street sections. Free half-hour or one-hour disc slots were available to motorists from February to March.
In recent years, solutions have been sought in big cities in Finland and around the world for the shrinking of the inner city. For example in Helsinki some entrepreneurs have been of the opinion that the city center is withering due to curbing private cars.
According to Vuotovesi, a large group of townspeople in Oulu make a big noise about the need to get to the city center with your own car. The free parking experiment was also started by the townspeople who wanted free parking spaces for short stops.
“Now the experiment has been done and the result is that there are fewer users. It is an important result and points to development”, says Vuotovesi.
In short there were always free spaces on the experimental streets of circular parking during the calculations. The occupancy rate was on average 37 percent on Asemakatu in the core center and 72 percent on average on Isokatu, which was clearly less than before the trial period.
In the feedback collected after the experiment, it was still hoped that the experiment would continue.
Entrepreneurs in the area criticized the experiment for the fact that the too short time of circular parking drove customers away from them. During the trial, even more people received parking fines on trial streets.
The most food couriers benefited from the experiment. The food couriers found the short parking spots quickly and used them actively.
In Oulu, more shopping and business trips are made with one’s own car than in the urban areas of Southern Finland. Almost three out of four business trips to the center of Helsinki are made by public transport, while in Oulu 57 percent come to the center by their own car.
The trial of free parking did not increase business in the center or significantly increase the number of central purchases in Oulu.
Vuotovesi believes that the card for increasing free parking has now been considered.
He would improve the attractiveness of the city center best by developing pedestrian streets and cycling opportunities.
The free parking experiment was part of a national one, funded by the Central Finland Association The sustainable future of the core city – development project. At the same time, in Oulu, the addition of bike parks in the winter time and the canopies of bike parks were also tested.
“We received laudatory feedback from the cyclists. The voice of motorists usually just wants to be heard the loudest,” Vuotovesi says.
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