Two of the leading candidates for mayor of Newham in May’s election are promising voters “free parking.” Labour’s Forhad Hussain says he will give residents an hour a day, anywhere in the borough. Mehmood Mirza of the Newham Independents has trumped that, offering 2 hours a day.
While that parking might ‘free’ in the sense that drivers don’t have to pay for it, it comes at a very considerable cost to the wider community.
Free parking is presented as a simple way to support residents with the cost of living and help local shops. The logic seems intuitive: if parking is cheaper, more people will visit the high street. But that ignores a well-established concept in transport economics known as Induced Demand.
Induced demand is what happens when the cost or difficulty of a particular activity is reduced. When something becomes easier or cheaper, people do more of it. In transport, this principle is most often discussed in relation to road building—new road capacity tends to attract additional traffic which quickly wipes out the advantage of having built it. The same dynamic applies to parking.
If parking becomes free, especially for short stays, it changes how people make everyday travel decisions. When parking costs money or requires effort—finding a machine, worrying about time limits—people think twice before driving a short distance. They may walk, cycle, or combine several errands into one trip. Removing the cost component changes that calculation. Suddenly, a quick car journey for a single item or a short visit feels worthwhile – it’s ‘free’ so why not?
As a result, free parking generates extra trips that would not otherwise have occurred. People may drive for errands they previously would have walked; make several separate trips instead of combining them; or return multiple times during the day because each visit includes a free parking period (neither candidate has explained how they would prevent people abusing the system like this). Even if the number of parking spaces remains unchanged – road space is a finite resource – the number of vehicle movements increases.
Parking spaces are limited, particularly in busy town centres like Green Street, Stratford and Forest Gate. When there’s a free hour of parking these spaces are often occupied by very short visits—coffee pickups, takeaway collections, or quick errands. These trips generate more traffic but do not necessarily contribute much to the local economy.
At the same time, the increased turnover of parking spaces means more cars circulating through the area: drivers searching for spaces, pulling in and out of bays, and making short journeys between nearby destinations. Research has shown that a notable share of city traffic consists of vehicles simply looking for some where to park. And all of those cars are generating pollution – exhaust fumes, brake pad dust, and micro-particles of tyre rubber.
Free parking can also have unintended consequences for the broader transport system. When driving becomes artificially cheap, it weakens the relative attractiveness of other ways of getting around. Walking, cycling, and public transport all become slightly less competitive compared with the convenience of driving door-to-door. Over time, this can reinforce car dependency and increase traffic volumes on local streets. In dense urban environments like Newham, that brings knock-on effects such as congestion, noise, and poorer air quality. These impacts affect everyone, including the very large number of residents who do not drive.
Giving residents free parking for an hour (or more) daily sounds fair, but it isn’t. Only half of Newham households own or have access to a car, so the benefits are skewed to towards those well-off enough to own and run a car, while everyone faces more traffic, noise, and pollution.
Parking policy is not just a revenue issue – though it definitely is and giving up millions of pounds a year in income will have knock-on consequences elsewhere in the council budget – it’s a transport management tool. Pricing and regulation help balance access to public space with the need to manage traffic and support healthier, more sustainable travel choices.
In short, while free parking may appear attractive, it comes with consequences. By lowering the cost of driving, it t encourages more car journeys—particularly short ones—adding pressure to already busy streets and undermining wider transport and public health goals. And in a borough with an epidemic of inactivity and obesity, it is the worst possible policy.
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