Dubai parking operator's revenue jumps as fines surge

Parkin's fleet of detector cars vital to enforcement of charges in the emirate

Parkin operates more than 90 per cent of Dubai’s on and off-street paid parking. Chris Whiteoak / The National

Dubai’s parking operator has announced that its revenue has jumped by nearly a third due to a major increase in the number of fines issued in the last three months of 2024.

Parkin, set up in January last year to manage parking in the emirate, revealed that it levied around 509,000 fines in the final quarter of 2024, up 60 per cent on the 317,400 fines handed out in the last three months of 2023. The amount levied in fines rose to Dh77 million in the final quarter of 2024, up from the same three months in 2023, when the figure was Dh44.8 million.

The increase was partly the result, the company said, of “technology-based improvements to our enforcement framework”. Vital to this is the fleet of smart inspection scan cars run by Parkin, which operates more than 90 per cent of Dubai’s on and off-street paid parking, both in public areas and in car parks owned by developers.

By the end of last year the fleet had grown to 25 vehicles. “These vehicles have expanded the company’s ability to undertake enforcement across new areas and with higher accuracy, reducing reliance on physical inspections,” Parkin said in a statement.

During the last quarter of 2024 the fleet scanned 6.9 million registration plates, which is up 53 per cent on the last three months of 2023, when 4.5 million were scanned. In the whole of 2024 Parkin issued about 1.67 million individual fines, 33 per cent up on 2023's total of around 1.26 million. Last year fines totalled Dh249.1 million, a 37 per cent rise on 2023's total of Dh181.3 million.

While more fines were levied, the number of unpaid fines went up faster, with the collection rate falling from 97 per cent from October to December 2023 to 85 per cent during the same months in 2024. “The collection rate was lower during the period because of an increase in the volume and quantum of fines,” the company stated.

Parkin revealed that its total revenue in the last three months of 2024 reached a record Dh265 million, up 30 per cent on the same period in 2023. Net profits rose 13 per cent to Dh120 million and the number of parking transactions went up 16 per cent to 36.9 million.

The company added about 10,400 spaces in total, taking the number in public and developer-owned locations to 206,400, a four per cent increase on a year earlier. Utilisation of spaces went up 2.4 percentage points to 28.3 per cent.

Measures to come

As previously announced, variable parking tariffs will be introduced from April for peak and off-peak tariffs in all public parking zones. A Dh6 hourly fee will be levied from 8am to 10am and from 4pm to 8pm in premium spaces, while for standard spaces the charge will be Dh4 per hour. An exception will be made for public holidays. Parking charges in Dubai apply from 8am to 10pm.

This month, Parkin introduced a dynamic pricing policy with motorists charged Dh25 per hour in areas with heavy traffic during major events. The company recommends public transport when attending events such as concerts, festivals, exhibitions and conferences.

Ahmed Bahrozyan, Parkin’s chairman, said that in the firm’s first year as a publicly listed company it had “made remarkable progress to meet its financial, strategic and social ambitions”.

“With our city’s accelerating economic growth, population expansion and record tourism in 2024, I am confident in Parkin's future outlook and our ability to deliver another strong performance in 2025,” he said. Although set up to oversee Dubai’s parking operations, Parkin signed an initial agreement in December to expand operations into Saudi Arabia.

Advantages of variable charges

Marcus Enoch, professor of transport strategy at Loughborough University in the UK, said variable charges could manage congestion, ideally alongside road pricing strategies of the kind Dubai also has. “If you charge more in the peak and less in the off-peak, some people might shift their time of travel,” he said.

“That should help manage congestion. Or some people might change their destination: instead of going to one shopping centre with a high charge, they might go to a different shopping centre that's further out because the parking is cheaper.”

He also said that in societies where people on very modest incomes travel by public transport rather than by car, parking charges could be seen as being progressive, because they potentially discourage some car use. In many countries, he said, motorists do not pay the full cost that driving imposes on society, such as expenditure on building and maintaining roads, or taking into account the pollution that car travel generates.

Car parking charges may, he indicated, mean that drivers pay more of the real-world costs of owning and using a car, and could reduce the number of trips made. He also said that car parking charges were often an important source of revenue and sometimes funded the costs of enforcing parking regulations. “There's quite a body of work that talks about the fact that car transport is underpriced,” he added.