The Hidden Cost of Workplace Car Parks in 2025
- Tomas Collins
- Apr 22
- 3 min read
How long did it take you to find a space this morning?
Six minutes? Ten? One of our recent contacts spent twenty—then had to park "non-compliantly" to make a meeting on time.
It’s a familiar frustration. But for facilities teams in 2025, the hidden cost of workplace car parks it’s no longer just an inconvenience. It’s a mounting operational challenge - one that impacts time, money, safety, and even sustainability.
How Do You Measure Parking Search Time?
The truth is - most workplaces don't. And, to be fair, it's only important if there is an issue. But there are several ways including:
Agent-Based Modelling: Simulating driver behaviour
Drones: overhead monitoring of vehicles from entrance to parking
Floating Car Data (FCD): Utilising GPS data from vehicles
Probabilistic Models: Estimating search durations based on supply and demand.
These are valid approaches - but each has its own limitations, whether in setup time, accuracy, or cost.
That’s why we developed a more practical method: the Time to Park Study. It’s designed specifically for workplace environments and doesn’t require integration with client IT or infrastructure (give us a shout if you’d like to learn more about that).
A recent study we conducted found the average time to park was 8 mins - that's an important number as it might not sound like a lot, but for large organisations especially it really starts to add up!
Cost 1 - Time & Productivity Loss
The most obvious impact is time. If your staff spends 8 minutes per day parking, that’s 40 minutes per week, or 30+ hours per year per person.
In a 500-person organisation, that translates to:
13,350 hours of lost time annually
The equivalent of over 7 full-time roles, doing nothing but parking
Unlike break times or collaborative pauses, this is not restorative or productive time. It’s pure friction—dead time that delays meetings, disrupts schedules, and adds invisible drag to the working day.
Cost 2 - Fuel & Emissions
Circling for parking is rarely efficient. Cars inch forward, idle, reverse, and loop again.
Based on average vehicle consumption and GPS-based parking studies, each employee wastes approximately:
13.9 litres of fuel annually
30.7 kg of CO₂ emissions per car per year
Equivalent to driving 267 km unnecessarily
Across a medium-sized organisation, this adds up to thousands of litres of fuel and tonnes of CO₂. That’s not just an environmental concern - it’s a cost issue too, particularly for companies with fleet or mileage schemes.
Cost 3 - Frustration & Workplace Experience
Time isn’t the only thing that gets burned. Frustration builds quickly when you're late for a meeting because the car park is jammed.
In organisations where parking is an issue, it is very likely to feature negatively in any employee satisfaction survey and in a competitive jobs marketplace, it can even affect attraction and retention of staff.
Cost 4 - Non-Compliant Parking & Safety
When spaces are tight and time is short, the temptation to park creatively kicks in.
We’ve seen first-hand how this manifests:
Blocking access routes or emergency bays
Parking on the grass, in accessibility spaces, non-EV cars parking in EV charging bays
Squeezing into restricted areas
Parking over lines, on verges, or near pedestrian paths
Every instance creates risk. For pedestrians, for drivers with reduced mobility, for emergency services. And from a facilities management perspective, each one is a liability.
It’s not just a matter of enforcement—it’s about understanding why non-compliance is happening in the first place. Often, it’s simply because the car park can’t absorb the demand.
The Real Hidden Cost of Workplace Car Parks Combined
Unlike city-centre or retail car parks, workplace car parks don’t generate revenue. But they do generate cost - quietly, steadily, and across multiple dimensions.
Time lost
Fuel consumed
Emissions released
Frustration created
Safety compromised
It is possible to reduce these costs - and improve Time to Park by up to 50% - by introducing smart parking tech. Getting drivers into work faster isn’t just convenient. It’s common sense.
At REDZone, we help organisations make smarter decisions about their sites - using IoT sensors and analytics to shine a light on how spaces are really being used.
If you’d like to continue the conversation, we’re always happy to chat.
📞 +353 1 963 0963
Comments