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Nobody likes to fork out their hard-earned cash on parking fees, but South African motorists actually have it kind of lucky.
A study in the United Kingdom which shows the cost of parking in 65 major cities found that Cape Town, the only African city on the list, has the third lowest parking fees in the world. Only Delhi in India and Buenos Aires in Argentina offer more affordable parking than the Mother City.
The study, conducted by the UK’s first end-to-end online car maintenance service fixter.co.uk, based their finding on what parking costs in five areas of each city: the airport, the car park and street parking in a shopping district, sport stadium and at the city hall. A median was formulated using the pricing for parking in each of those five areas in every city which is not only used to calculate each city’s overall ranking, but also it’s ranking in every area.
At an average rate of $1.01 per hour, Cape Town’s airport parking is rated the second cheapest in the world, edged out by only Beijing at $0.86. Sydney in Australia and Leeds in England top the list at an exuberant $13.01 per hour. As far as parking at the city hall goes, Cape Town is only edged by Mexico City, which charges $0.27 per hour in comparison the the Mother City’s $0.34. New York tops the city hall list with $25 per hour.
Cape Town furthermore ranks fifth when it comes to shopping mall parking lots. Its average rate of $0.67 is way below the meridian of $3.25. And speaking of meridian, New York’s parking lot rate at shopping mall is a staggering 822% above the meridian with an average rate of $30 per hour. In stark contrast, shopping mall parking in Los Angeles is free of charge. When it comes to street parking in the shopping district, Cape Town ranks sixth with an average of $1.18 per hour. Here Amsterdam tops the list with an average of $8.20 per hour.
When it comes to parking at sports stadiums, Cape Town’s average rate of $2.69 per hour means that it ranks sixth out of the 65 cities. Topping the list is Philadelphia in the US, where you’ll have to fork out no less than $40 per hour to park at the stadium.
Overall, based on the outcome of the meridian of each of the five areas, Cape Town’s average parking costs are all of 77.6% below the meridian.
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