Disc Parking - History

History

Disc parking was first introduced in Paris in 1957 and adopted in Kassel in 1961—in both cases the new parking system was introduced in an attempt to move away long-term parkers without erecting parking meters, which was considered too expensive. The concept proved to be effective and it spread throughout European countries in the 1960s. The first parking discs showed two clock faces—one with the arrival time and one with the departure time. Over time different variations of parking discs were created, including the Swiss variant that allowed for a fifteen hour maximum parking time.

A driver new to the system can get confused when not being informed about proper usage. For example, when Switzerland switched to the European-wide blue parking disc system, the "blue zones" in Basel were marked with "1 hour" signs that previously read "1½ hours", giving the impression that the time was reduced, but in fact it had not been. Another common error is when an overseas tourist might set the clock to the mark just preceding the current arrival time, which can make a one hour parking zone as short as thirty minutes, possibly resulting in an unjustified parking ticket.

On March 31, 1979 the conference of ministers of transportation in the European Union decided that a European standard should only use designs with a single clock face. The standardized clock disc was introduced as federal law in Germany in November 1981, and similar designs were adopted in other European countries. From 1998 the old parking disc designs began to be abolished. France set the last date to 2007, while in Switzerland (not an EU member) the EU parking disc design was introduced in 2000 and the old designs abolished in 2003.

Modern parking signs demanding disc parking include a pictogram of the standardized EU parking disc along with a number showing the maximum parking time in hours.