Want to carpool? Amsterdam wants to punish you.

Good news, Planet! I’m sharing a car. Bad news: we’re now playing a game called ‘How many times over can you pay to park your car?’ So far, the answer is: 5!

Living in Amsterdam, car-sharing seems the only appropriate thing to do.  Since my father-in-law lives in our building, we told him, ‘We’re sharing your car.’ Simple! With my wife & kids, we find ourselves using the car once every 2 weeks. My father-in-law uses it even less. When the time came to buy a new car, we thought ‘Why not do it together?’

Since I use the car for work, we decided to put the car in my name. Again, it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. We got the car home and felt like celebrating… until we realized the parking permit is still registered with the old car. In America, I think I’d have kept the same license plates and put them on the new car. Here, that’s not the case. To switch the old parking permit to the new car we’d have to visit the service center for the Cition Parking Company. Until then, we’d have to pay an hourly rate to park, just like everyone else.  In our neighborhood, it’s about 3 euros / hour.

Luckily, my parking app has no problem accepting a new license number. I use Parkline. My father-in-law uses ParkMobiel. We had no problem, until…

Problem 1: Cition Service Center says you can’t switch the parking permit to another owner. Even if you're sharing the car. There is apparently some logic to this plan. But all I understand is that I’m now paying an hourly rate to park 1 car, while we’re still paying a monthly rate to park a car that’s now somewhere in North Holland. We talked to the supervisor. Surely, this kind of thing has happened before? Surely, they’re not discouraging us from removing a car from the overcrowded neighborhood? Surely they’re not punishing us for doing the right thing?

Oh, but the punishment had only begun.
Problem 2: It turns out my father-in-law had also turned on his parking app.

Number of times we were paying for the car: 3.

You may know Cition Parking Services from their recent ad campaign, ‘If you park, you pay.’ Their job is to raise revenue for the city. But apparently business is so good they actually have enough money left over for an outdoor advertising campaign. Just to restate the obvious. I’m also in the business of buying ‘ad routes,’ and I happen to know they cost thousands of euros a week.

Cition has been hired by the city to enforce the parking rules. But – as they love to point out – they don’t make the rules. That would be the stadsdeel and the City Council. I have a friend on the Amsterdam City Council, and I asked his counsel. His advice was this: ‘Good luck. I’ve tried to tell them I moved, but they keep sending fines to my old address.’

It turns out the easiest solution was to change the ownership of the car back to my father-in-law, negating half the reason for getting a new car in the first place. And while we’re waiting for the paperwork to go through, we noticed a jolly little conference of Cition agents partying around our car. They were abuzz with chatter about how many parking tickets they could put on the windshield before some schlemiel noticed. I joined my father-in-law in running over to the parking party to protest: we’re already paying 3 times over! But no…

Problem 3: Parking apps only work if you’ve typed in the correct license number. It seems your smart phone is only as smart as you were frustrated when you typed in the details. My father-in-law had typed in the wrong license number.
Number of times we’re paying for the car: 5.

- Monthly for a car we no longer own.

- Hourly from the right phone. 

- Hourly from the wrong phone.
- 3x parking fines.
- Hourly for a car with one-letter difference from ours. Wherever you are, KLV 92 X, you’re welcome.

And congratulations to Cition for all your extra revenue. Will they reinvest the money in improving their common-sense infrastructure? Nah. But hopefully they can afford a nice new redundant ad campaign soon.