SOCIALIST city councillor Maria Isabel Oliver has announced that she will make two proposals regarding the charges at municipal car parks at the April 29 meeting.
She will ask the council to stop charging by the hour or fraction of the hour at the four car parks run by municipal company SMAP (Parc de la Mar, Comte d'Empuries, Via Roma and Santa Pagesa) and to change the rates so that the user will pay only for the real time the parking space has been used.
The second proposal is to ask the council's legal department to revise all the concessions of the privately-owned car parks.
The move came after a Madrid court issued a pioneering sentence in Spain, obliging six privately owned car parks to charge only for real time, instead of by the hour or fraction of the hour.
The case had been brought by the Spanish ministry of health and consumer affairs, and although the decision is applicable only to Madrid, it has raised interest throughout the country.
An appeal has yet to be heard.
Before the decision was announced, two independent reports commissioned by the Spanish Car Park and Garage Association, had reached the conclusion that fixing introduce.
Gijon said that for next year, the fraction of an hour will be reduced to ten minutes.
The year after, it will be further reduced to five minutes. And at the start of the legislature, the charge will be by the minute.
He pointed out that since last January, the charge at municipal car parks after the first hour is for fractions of 15 minutes, and if a driver uses the car park for less than a quarter of an hour he does not have to pay anything.charges in private car parks by the hour or fraction did not infringe users' rights.
The Palma city council is already considering charging by the minute, but Alvaro Gijon, who heads SMAP, explained earlier this year that it would take some time to
The car parks which are not run by SMAP will continue to charge as at the present time.
The city council has been building a network of underground car parks across the city in an effort to keep cars out of the centre.
It has also introduced more parking restrictions, which have come under fire from local traders, who says they keep customers away.