For those in a central yellow zone, annual permit fees could go up from €50 a year to €225, a council briefing suggests.
Dublin City Council is reviewing its parking bye-laws, considering EV incentives, higher residential permit fees, and a crackdown around Croke Park.
The council’s transport committee is due to meet today, and on the agenda is a discussion paper prepared by the council’s Parking Enforcement Section.
It sets out three policy issues for members of the committee to consider.
One proposal is to increase the price of residential parking permits, which have cost the same since 2011, according to the discussion paper.
At present, the vast majority of residents pay €50 for a one-year permit or €80 for a two-year permit, regardless of zone.
By contrast, parking for just 12 hours in the city’s most expensive yellow zone – the zone of highest demand – costs roughly the same as an annual permit.
Even bike parking is set to be more expensive than a residential car parking permit.
The cost to rent a space in a bike bunker, the secure hangers for on-street bike storage that are now set to be rolled out citywide after a successful pilot, is expected to be €100.
The council argues that the current system for residential car parking permits is outdated and does not reflect inflation or the rising cost of parking.
Two potential approaches are on the table.
Firstly, that permit fees would rise in line with any future parking charge increases.
Or, zonal pricing.
This means permits would scale according to local hourly rates.
Under this model, a yellow-zone permit would jump from €50 to €225 per year, with pro-rata increases in cheaper zones.
Councillors are being asked which option they prefer, and if they have any other suggestions for alternative models.
“My initial reaction is outrage,” says Noel Rigney, chair of the Iona and District Residents’ Association, which covers Drumcondra, home to Croke Park, and Glasnevin.
He lives in the green zone, so based on the zonal pricing model, the annual cost of residential parking permits in his area would more than double.
“We're screwed for property tax because the houses are expensive, because they're so close to the city. Now they want to screw you for the two meters outside the front door. It’s outrageous,” Rigney said by phone on Tuesday.
Sinn Féin Councillor Micheál MacDonncha, who is on the transport committee, says his party will not be supporting an idea that results in a residents’ parking permit jumping from €50 to €225.
As yet, the council hasn’t offered enough justification for the hike, he says.
“The document talks about inflation, but it doesn't give any justification in terms of costs by the council,” MacDonncha said on Tuesday.
Councillor Janet Horner, of the Green Party, worries that increasing the cost of having a resident’s permit will have the knock-on effect that people will be less interested in signing their street up for pay and display schemes.
At the moment, pay and display is a reasonably effective way to manage the chaotic system of parking in the city, Horner said on the phone on Tuesday.
Horner, who chairs the transport committee – formally the Mobility & Public Realm Strategic Policy Committee – says she feels that pay and display should be installed across every street in the city.
Independent Councillor Nial Ring would not object to some sort of increase in the resident parking permit cost, which is currently great value for money, he said on Tuesday by phone.
However, he wouldn’t get behind any increase that was too steep.
“So, I happen to have a house in North Strand, which is a blue zone, and someone else is in a yellow zone, and they're paying four and a half times? I wouldn't go for that one now,” Ring says.
Elsewhere on the document is a proposal that says owners of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) would see general parking charges effectively frozen until 2030, if they pay through the council’s mobile app.
While parking prices for petrol and diesel cars are expected to rise in the coming years, ZEV users would be shielded from these hikes.
This, the document explains, would be in line with Climate Neutral Dublin 2030, the council’s climate action plan, which pledges to reduce greenhouse gases by 51 percent by the end of the decade.
Councillors are being asked whether they support the incentive, whether the five-year freeze is too long or too short, and how charges should apply once the scheme ends.
“At the end of the five years should increases apply pro rata to Zero emission vehicles or be applied retrospectively?” it asks.
Horner says she is concerned that such a move would essentially punish people who can't afford ZEVs.
“I personally have no problem with somebody driving a 1996 old banger, so long as they're not pouring dirty fumes everywhere all the time,” she says.
“If they keep the car reasonably well and they're not using it that often, that's the equivalent of a low emissions vehicle, to me. The production cost of it is very low, because it's so long ago, it's much lighter,” she says.
Similarly, Rigney, of Iona and District Resident’s Association, calls the proposed move “a rich man’s charter”.
Most ordinary people simply can’t afford these newer vehicles, he says.
“And again, it's subsidising those who don't need the subsidy, while screwing people who are forced because of economic situations, to drive a 10-year-old car,” he says.
MacDonncha, the Sinn Féin councillor, says he wouldn’t have a difficulty with the proposal, but the bigger problem remains the affordability and viability of these zero-emission vehicles.
In the transport and climate action area, public transport, cycling and walking remain the best ways to go, he says.
Finally, the council is exploring a crackdown on match-day parking in residential areas near Croke Park.
While a two-hour maximum stay for pay and display has been effective in the past, the widespread use of mobile phone payment via the parking app has undermined the system, with match-goers topping up their parking remotely.
Officials are considering removing the ability to pay by phone in the area on a pilot basis, potentially designating a separate zone where remote payment would not be possible.
The aim is to discourage visitors from parking in residential streets on big match days.
Better engagement from the GAA with the council to figure out a more sustainable transport system for gigs and matches would be more attractive, says Horner, who lives near the stadium.
“My feeling from talking to the council was that Croke Park and the GAA aren't particularly interested in this aspect of things,” Horner says.
“They see that very much as the council's problem. So, you do end up with a very chaotic approach to parking and traffic management on those days,” she says.
While Horner says that many people living around GAA HQ understand match and concert days can be frantic, she says that traffic management could still be handled better.
For instance, she says that not having the bus lanes operating on a Sunday completely chokes up the entire public transport network
When traffic is in both the bus lanes and the regular lanes, it gets harder to use the bus to get to and from anywhere, if the match is on a Sunday.
“So that's something that, as somebody who lives in the area, I would like to see change,” she says.
The current lack of enforcement of traffic laws on match and event days around Croke Park is a bigger issue, says Rigney.
“On any random Tuesday afternoon, you’d see six cars clamped on any road. But on match days, people are parked everywhere and parking enforcement goes AWOL,” he says.
Creating a designated zone that can be switched on or off on the day of a match would be good, says Rigney. But, he says, he wouldn't like to see a designated zone where there's no ability to pay with mobile parking ever.
Coming from a software background professionally, he says such a thing would be straightforward to set up.
“Certainly, on the 10 or 15 days a year that are the problem days, it would be brilliant, but for the other 300 days a year, it should be just treated as the rest of Dublin,” he says.
The three proposals are on the agenda for today’s meeting of the Mobility & Public Realm SPC for discussion, before any draft bye-laws are brought forward for formal adoption.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
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