DOWNTOWN — Chicagoans pay an average of $13 for two hours of street parking, a new report has found — meaning the city has the most expensive street parking in the United States.
The city's street parking is even more expensive than in car-crowded New York ($7) and Los Angeles ($8), according to a report from INRIX, a company that creates apps for parking and traffic. The report collected data from thousands of drivers and more than 100,000 parking locations.
Two-hour parking in a garage or in another area off the street is even more expensive at $21.54 in Chicago, but other cities have it worse: New Yorkers pay $32.80 while people in Boston dish out $25.59.
The report found Chicagoans spend an average of nine minutes per trip looking for street parking and eight minutes for off-street parking. The time, fuel and emissions wasted on that search add up to $1,174 per driver every year — or $1.3 billion per year for all of Chicago.
In comparison, New Yorkers spent 15 minutes looking for street parking and 13 minutes looking for off-street parking to the tune of $4.3 billion.
People in Los Angeles and San Francisco each spend 12 minutes looking for street parking and 11 for off-street parking, which ends up costing people in those cities $3.7 billion and $655 million, respectively.
