As urban space becomes increasingly limited, cities across Europe are rethinking the role of cars. In Vienna, parking management is no longer just a technical matter, it’s a way to reclaim public space, ease congestion, and improve everyday life. Experts from Vienna showed the way to achieve this aim during a recent conference in Budapest.

Public space

Roman Riedel and Patrick Futterknecht from the City of Vienna shared the principles and outcomes of Vienna’s parking management system. They provided an inspiring overview of the Viennese parking management model, which is one of the largest in Europe.
They delivered a strong shared message: the role of the car in cities needs to be reconsidered. “Cars cannot be the main means of transport in the city”. In fact, cars often seem more like obstacles than solutions. They take up too much space and cause many other problems (noise, air pollution, accidents, stress, tiredness, lack of physical activity, etc.).
“Space is a scarce and precious commodity in cities”, said Roman Riedel. In densely built-up cities like Vienna, cars are not suitable as the main mode of transport because they occupy too much space while transporting relatively few people. Free parking also contributes to traffic congestion, as it encourages drivers to use their cars more often and drive pointless kilometres in search of a parking space, which is harmful to the environment and the economy.
Roman Riedel emphasized that car travel should still be possible for people who need it, such as people with reduced mobility, workers with unusual hours, or for deliveries but it needs to be better organized and adapted to the city environment. This is where parking management becomes essential.
Due to parking reforms, parking space saturation has substantially decreased between 1993 and 2024.

               Parking Space Management Vienna
               Reduction of parking space utilisation in the morning (9:00-11:00 a.m.)

The City of Vienna is gradually converting the public space occupied by parked cars in favour of higher-value uses such as public transport, pedestrian and bicycle traffic and trees.

The series of parking reforms coupled with other measures have resulted in a substantial decrease in car traffic.

New parking regulations

Patrick Futterknecht explained that since 1993, Vienna has gradually introduced parking management on a metropolitan scale. In 2022, the whole city was covered with short-term parking zones where parking fees for non-residents are uniformly 2.6 EUR/hour and residents can park unlimited for 120 EUR/year. These zones limit parking to two hours, Monday to Friday between 9 AM and 10 PM. Regarding residential parking, there is a system of digital vignettes, which replaced physical stickers from October 2023.
Employees who start work before 5:30 AM, finish work after midnight or for some reason cannot approach their workplaces by public transportation, can apply for a “Park Chip” that allows them to park near their workplace (price: 60 EUR/year, number of Park Chips: 486). Companies can apply for exception permits in the district of their location and in the district of their worksite (e.g. off-site customer service). In both cases, the permit costs 120 EUR for the first vehicle and 249 EUR for each additional vehicle, and in the latter case, daily or weekly flat-rate cards must be used for 4.1 or 20.5 EUR, respectively. 18,845 and 42,222 exception permits are provided for company cars in the district of the company’s location and in the district of the off-site working place, respectively. In addition, there are 9,063 exception permits provided for cars that are parked both at the company and the off-site working place.   
The expansion of the parking zones proved to be highly effective in reducing parking saturation. When parking fees were introduced in a district, parking saturation typically dropped from above 90% to around 70-90%, while in the neighbouring districts where parking has remained free, parking saturation increased by a couple of percent. Then this increase prompted the further expansion of the parking zones until parking fees were applied in the whole city.  

Vienna vs Budapest

The greatest difference between the parking regulations of Vienna and Budapest is that while in Vienna parking fees apply in the whole city, in Budapest they apply only in the inner city, i.e. on around 15% of Budapest’s territory. Thus, while Vienna’s parking system efficiently discourages car use in the whole city – particularly in the case of people who reside outside Vienna– parking fees in Budapest discourage car use only in the inner city. The lack of parking fees in the outer city is the main reason why each day more than 300,000 cars enter Budapest from the agglomeration, and these cars constitute half of the car traffic in Budapest at peak time. In Vienna, the parking of non-Viennese cars dropped by 70% in the outer districts where parking fees were introduced in 2022.    
Certainly, the revenue is higher in Vienna due to the higher fees and their citywide application. The revenue from non-residential parking fees is around 125 million EUR in the Austrian capital, while in Budapest it is around 40 million EUR. Regarding that in Vienna, there are around three times as many parking spaces where parking fees apply than in Budapest and the parking fee is 2.5 times higher in Vienna than the average parking fee in Budapest, so one could expect a greater difference. The relatively low revenue in Vienna reflects the success of citywide parking fees in discouraging parking in the outer districts.
Nevertheless, regarding some features, Budapest performs better. In Vienna, residential parking permits are valid in the whole district which encourages intra-district car use to a great extent. In Budapest, parking permits are typically valid only in the zone of the resident which is much smaller than the district (except in the small inner districts where permits are valid in the whole district). In addition, in Budapest, the parking fees are three times higher in the centre compared to the outer parking zones which reflects the scarcity of parking spaces and discourages car use more effectively in the inner city where car use is the most problematic. This approach is common in most European cities, for example, in Amsterdam, parking fees range from €1.34 to €7.76 per hour. Vienna might follow suit in the future because these features are problematic according to the presenters.

Encouraging environment-friendly transport

The parking regulation in Vienna has significantly reduced the number of illegally parked vehicles, particularly in the evening, as parking has become easier in legal parking spaces. Traffic also flows more smoothly, and people spend less time looking for parking. It also encourages people to use public transport or parking garages. In the 21st district (Floridsdorf), for example, areas formerly occupied by cars have been transformed into pedestrian zones with trees with street furniture installed and pavements extended. The city gains in terms of quality of life, calming and climatic resilience.

Parking logistics

This success also relies on strong logistics. Vienna’s parking supervision service (MA67) employs 650 officers working across six stations, covering over 560 patrol zones. Every week, around one million controls are carried out. Officers use electric bikes, cars, and a digital map app that gives them up-to-date legal and geographic data. Meanwhile, the customer service team handles about 500 phone calls and 4000 written requests per day, resolving most of them quickly.
Ultimately, the Viennese experience makes one thing clear: parking management is more than a technical matter. When thoughtfully designed, it becomes a powerful tool for urban transformation, supporting fairer mobility, reclaiming public space, adapting to climate needs, and improving the everyday life of city dwellers.

The insights shared in this article were presented during a conference held in Budapest on April 8, 2025. The event was organized by the NGO Clean Air Action Group (CAAG), the Hungarian Parking Association (Hungaropark), and the Urban Transport Section of the Transport Science Association, with the support of the International Offices of the City of Vienna in Budapest and the Clean Cities Campaign. The participants of the panel discussion were: Roman Riedel, Officer in the Mobility Strategies Department of the City of Vienna, Urban Development and Urban Planning Unit; Patrick Futterknecht, Head of the Budget, Controlling, IFM and Communication Department of the City of Vienna – Parking Supervision Magistrate; László Sipos, Member of the Supervisory Board of Hungaropark; Zoltán Potzner, Coordinator of Traffic Engineering at Budapest Közút (the Municipality company responsible for traffic management and maintenance). The discussion was moderated by András Lukács, CAAG’s President with the help of Szandra Fuchs, head of the Budapest Office of the International Offices of the City of Vienna.

Jade Devillepoix, intern at Clean Air Action Group
Csaba Tóth, Policy Officer at Clean Air Action Group