Most people assume driving themselves is the cheaper option and book parking without running the numbers. Sometimes they are right. Often they are not, and the gap is wider than expected once everything is counted rather than just the parking fee.
The real cost of driving and parking
Parking is the obvious cost but it is not the only one. A fair comparison for a two week trip from Walsall includes:
- Parking for the full duration
- Fuel both ways, roughly 40 miles round trip
- Wear, tyres and mileage on your own vehicle
- The shuttle bus from the cheaper car parks, in time rather than money
Birmingham parking varies enormously by how far in advance you book and which car park you choose. Booked months ahead in a long stay car park it can be reasonable. Booked the week before in short stay it becomes expensive quickly.
The comparison in practice
| Trip length | Parking route | Transfer route |
|---|---|---|
| Weekend, 3 days | Often cheaper | Competitive |
| One week | Roughly level | Roughly level |
| Two weeks | Usually dearer | Usually cheaper |
| Three weeks plus | Clearly dearer | Clearly cheaper |
The crossover generally sits around a week. Short trips favour driving. Longer trips favour a transfer, and the longer you go the wider the gap gets, because a transfer costs the same for two days as it does for two months while parking keeps charging.
Parking is charged twice in a sense. You pay for the space, and you pay again in the drive home. Landing at 6am after a night flight and then driving up the M6 is the worst part of many holidays, and it is the part most likely to go badly wrong.
Where driving genuinely wins
It is not always the transfer. Driving makes sense when:
- You are away for two or three days only
- You are travelling alone and can use a small car park deal
- Your flight times are civilised at both ends
- You need your car immediately on landing for something specific
Where a transfer wins clearly
- Trips beyond a week, where parking accumulates and a transfer does not
- Groups of four or more, because the transfer cost splits and the parking cost does not
- Very early departures or very late arrivals
- Long haul, where you land tired and jet lagged
- Travelling with children, where the door to door element matters
- Anyone who does not want to leave a car unattended for a fortnight
The group maths
This is where it stops being close. Four people in an MPV to Birmingham Airport at £48 works out at £12 each way per person. Parking for two weeks does not come close to that per head, and the four of you travel together rather than in convoy.
The part that is not about money
Holidays start badly when the first hour involves a multi storey car park and a shuttle bus with luggage. They end badly when the last hour is a motorway drive on no sleep.
That is not a number you can put in a table, but it is the reason a lot of people switch once and never go back.
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