THIS IS THE sight that would have welcomed one unfortunate motorist during the week in Dublin city centre.
Anyone who thought that free parking was available to people charging their electric vehicle (EV) in Dublin would have been wrong.
It seems that while some areas are EV only bays - where only electric vehicles are allowed to park in order to charge their cars – people are still required to pay the designated parking fee.
In Dublin city centre that works out at €2.90 per hour. On a standard Type2 car charger (which most are) it can take up to eight hours to fully charge your vehicle (although in most cases it won’t take that long), which would work out costing €23.20 for the charge (still a lot less than a full tank of petrol).
A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said that while certain areas of the city were designated “EV only bays” (where only motorists driving electric vehicles could park to charge up), other charge-points had been installed by ESB Ecars “without consultation with the council”.
“Certain locations are not suitable for the designation of EV only bays,” the spokesperson said.
However, even when in a designated electric vehicle parking spot, the council said that motorists were “still subject to the same parking regulations as other motorists, i.e. they must pay for their parking and there is a maximum stay of 3 hours”.
Free parking
Dublin City Council’s policy is in contrast to other local authorities around Ireland (for example, Cork city), where free parking is given in certain areas to any electric vehicles charging for up to three hours.
As well as this, certain locations (for example, Irish Rail car parks) offer designated EV only parking for free.
The rationale behind this is to encourage more drivers to take to electric vehicles – which have significantly lower fuel emissions than conventional gasoline powered cars.
A spokesperson for ESB told TheJournal.ie it was “working with local authorities to mark spaces adjacent to electric vehicle charge points as electric vehicle only”.
Some local authorities allow free designated parking for a period of time while an electric vehicle is charging but there is no consistent policy throughout the country, it is up to each individual authority to decide to treat this.
In the ESB electric car guidelines, it says that all drivers of electric vehicles should “make themselves aware of the local parking regulations and bye laws, as marked car park spaces does not guarantee free parking.”
Dublin City Council said in its statement that the fee on electric vehicle parking was to ensure “a regular turnover of parking bays as otherwise EV motorists could park all day every day for free”.
Green Party Dublin City Councillor Ciarán Cuffe said that new regulations were needed to tackle the issue and that cars being clamped while at charge points was sending out the wrong message to motorists.
When the council was questioned on whether they had any plans to bring in parking-fee exemptions for people charging their electric vehicles, the spokesperson said that it “currently has no plans to change the current regulations”.
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