Transportation

The American Tourist Attraction With The Most Expensive Parking

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: January 17, 2022 12:42 pm

Parking in America’s largest cities can be expensive. Some parking lots in Manhattan require payments of $600 a month, close to the monthly price of an apartment in much less crowded cities. And, daily parking rates can be astronomical. In some of Manhattan’s largest office districts, or near major attractions, parking can be over $50 a day. The expectations for tips run as high as $10.

Parking garage owners clearly find that areas were people either have to go, or want to go, allow for very high prices. It is supply and demand at its purest.

The attractions that draw the most people in crowded place usually have significant limits on parking space. Some cities have metered parking on streets, but demand means that most if not all of these are filled.

Most large cities have museums. The parking around these can be prohibitively expensive. A few cities have large theme parks which can draw tens out thousands of people a day.

Zuboti recently released a repot titled “The Attraction Parking Report”. Data was based on the Google search term “top attractions in USA”. Each of the locations on the resulting list was contacted for parking rates. The universe was the first 20 locations based on the Google search results. The report not only looked at the most expensive parking locations–it also looked at those with free parking.

The most expensive attraction for parking was The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is located on Fifth Avenue, on the eastern edge of Central Park. The residential area nearby is among the most expensive in the world.

“The Met” as it is known, was opened in 1872. The cavernous building with several wings is the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses two million pieces of art. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it had over four million visitors a year.

At the far end of the parking price spectrum is one of America’s top tourist attractions. It is free to park at Niagara Falls.

Click here to read America’s Most Visited City Parks