The hunt for a perfect parking spot not only can be time consuming; it can be costly.
According to a study by INRIX Research, Americans collectively "waste" $72.7 billion a year looking for parking when factoring the impact to the economy. According to INRIX, the average American spends 17 hours a year looking for parking.
Altogether, that means Americans use 3.6 billion hours of time and 1.7 billion gallons of fuel to hunt for parking.
And America's largest and most congested cities are largely to blame.
The average motorist in New York City spends 107 hours a year looking for parking. That adds up to nearly $4.3 billion a year in NYC alone being wasted looking for parking.
"The problem is that today, parking isn’t optimized for most drivers," INRIX researcher Graham Cookson said. "The majority of drivers navigate to their destination without knowing where parking is available when they get there. When they arrive, they waste time hunting for a space to park while getting stuck in – and contributing to – congestion. If they’re lucky enough to find a space, they overpay for parking in case they overrun, and if they do overrun they receive a parking ticket."
And those overruns and parking tickets can also be quite expensive. INRIX found that Americans overspend on parking a total of $20 billion a year. Tickets add up to be $2.6 billion a year nationally.
To read the full report, click here.
