New regulation: Thousands of Zurich residents could lose their resident parking permit

If you want to buy a residents' parking permit in Zurich, you pay between  240 and 360 francs per year - a price that many people can afford. But this could soon be a thing of the past: Because the municipal council wants to introduce the "Biel model"  in the city of Zurich too. This means that residents who live in a house with an underground garage or other private parking spaces will no longer receive a blue parking card.

Research by the "Tages-Anzeiger" shows that the planned new regulation could be really expensive for many people in Zurich: Because an underground parking space costs between 350 and 700 francs a month, depending on the location. On the outskirts of the city, the rent ranges from 150 to 300 francs per month.

In Biel, around 40 percent of parking card holders lost their right to park in the blue zone. In absolute figures, this means that of 2965 resident cards, only 1678 were left after two years. In the city of Zurich, 32,000 people currently have a blue parking card. If a similar number of people as in Biel lose them as a result of the new regulation, only around 19,000 permits will remain.

However, it is not known how many houses in Zurich actually have underground parking spaces. However, it has been mandatory for new buildings to have one since 1978. The new regulation is therefore unlikely to affect residents of older buildings.

It is likely that the new regulation will be introduced, as there is a majority of left-green parties in the municipal council. The FDP, on the other hand, spoke out against the underground parking obligation: It wants it to only apply if underground parking spaces are available "at neighborhood-standard rents". "Anyone who is offered a parking space for 500 to 800 francs per month would not have to accept it," FDP municipal councillor Andreas Egli told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper. It is highly likely that this proposal will be rejected by the municipal council.