As my tour of London's Monopoly board reaches the halfway point, halfway through the year, let's go in hunt of Free Parking.
Parking in central London is difficult, deliberately so, and generally not free. Yellow lines are everywhere, invisible parking meters abound and even if you do find a space it's probably time limited. So the question I thought I'd ask is
How far out of central London do you have to go to find free parking?
n.b. I'm looking for genuinely free parking with no restrictions.
Not for residents only.
Not for customers only.
Not reserved for the disabled.
Not for charging an electric vehicle.
Not somewhere with a maximum length of stay.
Not somewhere that's only free between Xpm and Yam.
Proper free parking, like on the Monopoly board.
I decided it would be too difficult to scrutinise the whole of inner London in search of parking spaces so I settled on a slightly easier task. I started at the agreed centre of London, Trafalgar Square, which is itself on the Monopoly board. Then I walked north and kept walking north until I found somewhere you could park a car for free.
I invite you to guess how far I had to go before I found a road with no parking restrictions whatsoever. This map might help.
Westminster
Trafalgar Square, where I'm kicking off, is not somewhere you can park for free. As well as double yellow lines I also found signs saying 'No waiting at any time' and 'No loading at any time', the underlying message very much 'Please keep going and don't even think about stopping here'. And quite right too. Even in residential streets very close by (and there are some) the bays are reserved for residents 24 hours a day so you won't be slotting in there. Heading north it didn't take me long to find my first paid-for bay, this on St Martin's Lane opposite the Duke of York's Theatre. Every hour here costs somewhere between £4.62 and £9.24 according to emissions, this being Westminster council's charging rationale, with Parking Zone G1 having their joint most expensive tariff. Come after 6.30pm or before 8.30am or on Sunday and it's free, granted, but that doesn't count as free parking under my rules so I walked on.
Camden
By Seven Dials I was already in another borough with different parking rules, but not necessarily more lenient. The entirety of Camden is covered by Controlled Parking Zones (CPZ), with this part of Covent Garden being part of zone CA-C where the same 8.30am-6.30pm Mon-Sat restrictions apply. You can see why, these are narrow streets ill-suited to vehicles let alone parking them, or else urgent arteries in need of free flow. I was well past Russell Square before I saw my first single yellow lines, at Cartwright Gardens, these now in CA-D. Euston Road is of course a red route, then Midland Road (along the side of St Pancras) is bordered on both flanks by segregated cycleways so parking is no longer practical, let alone permitted. I walked on.
Progressing north the restricted hours ease very slightly - in zone CA-D (King's Cross) Saturday afternoons are free and in zone CA-G (Somers Town) Saturday mornings are too. But most streets are still 'No parking' or 'Permit holders only', perhaps with occasional paid-for bays which can be accessed via the RingGo app. I thought I'd finally found a free parking spot at the entrance to Cedar Way Industrial Estate where multiple cars and vans were squished along the kerb but sadly no. A fading sign on the verge warned this was private parking with a towaway fee of £250 for invalid vehicles plus £30 a day for storage, so I walked on.
Beyond the scuzzy end of Camley Street the proper patchwork of suburban streets finally began. Here I reached Camden Square (or CA-N as the council knows it) where the villas are dead smart and the roads are easily wide enough for parking down both sides. But again no, it's still all residents-only with occasional bays where weekday parking costs, and I was starting to wonder if free parking would ever manifest. It finally did outside the shops on York Way, an opportunity to pull into a special bay on the red route and nip into the florist, salon or takeaway without paying a penny. But only for an hour and then no return for two hours, and alas that doesn't count as proper free parking under my rules so I walked on.
Islington
Another borough meant new rules for parking and new hope. But no, the entirety of Islington is also covered by Controlled Parking Zones, every last acre, some of which have additional restrictions on events days at the Emirates. My northward journey thankfully dodged the latter, but zones IS-D and IS-W still have restrictions from breakfast to teatime every weekday on the rare occasions non-residential bays are provided. Beyond Tufnell Park Road I fortuitously found myself in IS-U, Islington's most lenient parking zone, a backwater of a dozen streets where organic veg drops are commonplace and Jeremy Corbyn posters adorn occasional windows. Here the restrictions apply only between 10am and noon five days a week, still just enough to dissuade all-day parking but not full-on free parking so I walked on.
I was now four miles from Trafalgar Square - it felt further - in the vicinity of Upper Holloway station. Another red route intruded, now with a 30 minute upper limit, then the grid of backstreets returned. These felt narrower, hence zone IS-P again had Saturday morning restrictions, then zone IS-Z ditched them again in favour of 10am-2pm weekdays instead. By now I was quite impressed by Islington's unwillingness to slap a blanket ban across the borough, instead matching hours to local conditions and easing off where the deterrent doesn't need to be so strong. I noted I was still walking through streets built before the motor car became a dominant force, i.e. nobody had a front garden large enough to turn over to parking, hence even on wide streets the restrictions continued. I walked on.
Haringey
I crossed into Outer London at the top of Crouch Hill and entered my fourth borough. Haringey display things more diligently by placing numerous parking signs at roughly car-window height along the length of most streets - you can't miss them. They're also a bit more lenient on the length of restrictions, at least here in the west of the borough away from the stringencies of Wood Green and the wider environs of Tottenham's stadium. The streets of Crouch End East (CE-A) only have restrictions from 10am-noon on weekday mornings while Crouch End West (CE-B) switches things round and does 2-4pm on weekday afternoons. It's only ten hours a week, the remaining 94% of the week being free parking, but it's still not 100% so I walked on.
And then finally, just beyond Priory Park, the CPZs finally stopped. Haringey has never felt the need to introduce parking restrictions across much of the northwest of the borough and I had at last entered this golden zone along Park Avenue South. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been specifically looking but the low-level signs had ceased and the kerbside was now a free-for-all. The short section outside the fire station still obviously had restrictions but not the rest, perhaps because many front gardens were now large enough for parking. The chief issue was that almost every space along the road was already taken so nobody turning up on spec would have been able to park, but notionally they could have done so I walked no further.
So in response to my original question, how far out of central London do you have to go to find free parking, my answer is 5½ miles. This is of course only applicable to the compass direction I chose to walk, which is crucial because had I been only a tad further east I'd have had to continue through Wood Green to the far side of the North Circular. No doubt some of you will know of free parking nearer to Trafalgar Square in other directions, spaces which anyone can turn up and use any time for as long as necessary. But I think what my two hour slog taught me is that of all the spaces on the Monopoly board, the only one you won't find near central London is Free Parking.
