Car parks are facilitators of the liveable city
Given the pressure on infrastructure due to urbanisation and growing numbers of cars, car parks continue to provide an essential function and will become more than places to only leave cars.
There are several clear trends in the European mobility sector: a transition from fossil-fuelled to electric vehicles (EVs), and pressure on city infrastructure due to urbanisation and the growing number of cars. There are questions about where to charge EVs and how to ensure cities remain accessible for all. Since car parks can play an important role in this contradiction, Primevest Capital Partners, Europe’s leading investment manager in car parks, hosted a roundtable event at Provada, the Dutch real estate trade fair.
Fred Wilkes, director of business development at Q-Park Netherlands, Carlo Barten, managing director at APCOA Parking Netherlands, and Rutger Schuur, chief investment officer at ParkBee, shared their vision. The main theme, “Car parks: the facilitators of the liveable city”, was introduced by moderators Bas Magielse, head of parking, and Tim Vreeken, fund analyst, at Primevest Capital Partners.
Facilitating the transition to EVs
Barten kicked off the roundtable by arguing the car park sector could play an important role in the transition from fossil-fuelled vehicles to EVs.
“Charging an EV takes more time than filling up a car with petrol, even when charged at a fast charger. Converting all petrol stations into EV charging stations will not be sufficient for this reason. Therefore, it would make sense to position EV chargers in public car parks, as EVs tend to be parked there for a longer time.”
“Moreover, local authorities want to reduce on-street car parking in cities, but they also want to position EV chargers on streets to promote the use of EVs. However, the latter would result in the opposite of reducing on-street car parking. A logical outcome would be to position EV charging facilities inside car parks,” he said.
Wilkes pointed out the importance of 2035, the deadline set by the European Union to end the sale of fossil-fuelled cars. “Some countries, such as the Netherlands, are thinking of more ambitious targets, like 2030. And several car manufacturers have hinted they will only sell EVs from 2025 or 2026 onwards.
“Fossil-fuelled vehicle owners can refuel quickly in many places, while EV owners often look for an EV charger when they park, as they know that’s the window to charge their EV. In the Netherlands, around 20% of EV owners don’t have a charging facility at home. So it would make sense to invest in positioning EV charging facilities inside car parks, where EVs are already parked, rather than in public spaces.”
Installing EV chargers can be left to the market, the Q-Park director said. “We started implementing EV chargers in car parks 10 years ago and this year we’ll be heading for 1,750 in the Netherlands. The government could help us by ensuring that the grid has sufficient capacity to supply the electricity required by the chargers, as this is one of the biggest bottlenecks we face.”
Car parks as a city’s battery
Car parks could even have a key role in supporting the grid, Wilkes continued. “In a car park, the electricity stored in the batteries of EVs can be returned to the grid. If just 10,000 fully charged EVs were connected to the grid between 8pm and midnight, Utrecht’s entire peak electricity demand could be satisfied. After midnight, when the peak has passed, the EVs could be recharged again. In a way, car parks could become the city’s battery.”
Barten was less optimistic about EVs being used as batteries, because of the tiered pricing structure. “What if you buy the electricity to charge your EV at 30 cents, but get only 20 or 15 cents for what you return to the electricity grid?” he asked.
“The battery function would only be a success at private car parks, where there is only one fleet owner paying for the electricity of all cars parked. In public car parks, we need a transparent payment system that consumers trust and want to use. Right now, we don’t have this.”
Impact of car parks on inclusivity
Schuur told the audience that car parks could contribute enormously to the economy of a city by ensuring it remained accessible. “However, I have reservations about the impact car parks have on the inclusivity of our cities. No one living in social housing in Amsterdam can afford to pay €300 a month for a space in a car park, which is what a commercial car park operator would be asking,” he said.
Barten stressed that pricing is largely a derivative of parking policies. “Municipal parking policies are ensuring that on-street parking slowly disappears, and other forms of transport are prioritised. This results in parking spaces becoming scarcer and, consequently, the parking tariffs increase. Other factors in car parks limit inclusivity, such as a lack of parking facilities for disabled people. We’ve quite a decent number of parking spaces with [reserved disability] symbols, but apart from that, we don’t do much. We can and should improve further.”
Wilkes told the audience the parking sector is already addressing its social role towards families, the elderly and people with disabilities, by ensuring that they could be mobile. “That’s why Q-Park and other operators are working with local authorities to let them use the unused capacity in car parks during off-peak periods, like the evening and at night.”
Digitisation
Magielse asked if further digitisation of the sector could have an impact on ensuring cities remained liveable, given the pressure on infrastructure due to urbanisation and the growing number of cars.
“The current expectation is that the populations of some European cities may even double,” Schuur said.
“Car parks can play a role in managing inner-city traffic congestion. At ParkBee, we’re trying to open existing private car parks to the public. To a lesser extent, this helps solve the traffic congestion caused by cars looking for a parking space.”
Schuur said that 15% of inner-city traffic consisted of cars looking for a parking space. “Digitisation is key to reducing the volume of search traffic, to ensure less car movement and congestion in the city.”
More functions means less traffic
Vreeken asked if the need to reduce car movement in the city centre could pose a risk to the existence of inner-city car parks.
Wilkes considered this risk to be limited. “The number of cars in the Netherlands increased by 70% over the past 20 years and the required number of parking spaces has not and is not expected to decrease. However, we do have to change the way we manage car movements in our (inner) cities to increase liveability. One way is digitisation (i.e. pre-booking turns search traffic into destination traffic), but more importantly, car parks must become more than just a place to leave a car.”
Car parks could function as mobility hubs by offering shared electric scooters or cars, he said. “In addition, both regular and fast EV charging can be facilitated in car parks, as well as urban logistics (last-mile services) such as parcel delivery and pick-up points.”
Behind the scenes, car parks and shared transport providers talk a lot, said Barten. “They’re not a natural mix, as they have conflicting financial models. We make money when a car is parked, and the shared transport providers make money when a vehicle is driving. We are looking at what model is advantageous to both.”
Q-Park and The Hague
Wilkes highlighted Q-Park’s multimillion-euro investment to add more functions to five existing car parks. “At one project in the centre of The Hague (at the Amsterdamse Veerkade), we have already placed about 1,200 solar panels on the roof and linked them to batteries to make the car park self-sufficient and able to use its own energy at night.
Q-Park partnered with The Hague’s city authorities and Shell to facilitate bicycle parking; to install six fast and 36 regular EV chargers for shared e-mobility/electric cars; to develop a kiosk and a workplace for people waiting for their EVs to charge; to set up 240 spaces for electric scooters; and to help the municipality to combat street clutter and to implement an urban logistics service for the people living in the city centre.”
Barten addressed the topic of shared bicycles and electric scooters cluttering up the city’s streets. “At the moment, local authorities want shared scooters to remain visibly parked on pavements, so everyone [can] get used to the concept. If you make shared electric scooter companies pay for parking now, you would kill the concept. However, shared mobility alternatives will eventually move into car parks, because it is not a sustainable business model for local authorities to replace income-generating on-street car parking with shared-scooter parking.”
He went on to say some statistics indicate that the number of bicycles in Rotterdam would increase tenfold. “What will happen if everyone parks their bicycle at the entrance of a shop? My expectation is that a lot of people will complain about blocked pavements and therefore this will have to be regulated as well. Bicycles might eventually have to be parked in mobility hubs.”
Investment
Primevest Capital Partners continues to work on facilitating investment products in the car park sector and will embrace changes in the mobility landscape in its investment strategies, while at the same time keeping a close eye on the quality and sustainability in our cities.
