To park in a Kurzparkzone (short-term parking zone) in Vienna, you need to fill out and display a Parkschein (prepaid parking voucher).
- See also: Parking in Vienna (with info on the phone-based payment alternative to a physical voucher)
The prepaid parking vouchers
All central areas in the city are covered by a Kurzparkzone, with plans in place to harmonise the system and turn most of Vienna into one giant short-term parking zone by March 2022.
You purchase the prepaid parking vouchers from, for example, newsagents (Trafik), public transport ticket offices, ticket machines in subway stations, some petrol stations, and the Austrian automobile associations (ARBÖ and ÖAMTC).
The 15-minute purple Parkschein is free, but the others cost as follows:
- up to 30 mins (red voucher): 1.10 Euro
- up to 60 mins (blue): 2.20 Euro
- up to 90 mins (green): 3.30 Euro
- up to 120 mins (yellow): 4.40 Euro
Get all the formal requirements and information from the official pages of the Vienna city authorities, and find helpful tips and photos below.
The 15-minute Parkschein
This purple voucher allows you to park for up to 15 mins in a Kurzparkzone without paying. All you have to do is fill in the time of your arrival as follows:
Stunde: This is where the hour goes. Use the 24-hour clock system, e.g. 15 for 3pm. If it’s before midday, put a zero in the first box, then the hour, e.g. 09.
Minute: Surprise! This is where you put in the minute. Again, if it’s before ten past, put a zero in the first box.
So this is what your voucher should look like if you parked at six minutes past seven in the morning:
Important: once the 15 minutes is up, you have to leave.
You can’t (unfortunately) combine this voucher with paid vouchers or additional 15-minute vouchers. It’s intended just for those who are making a short stop to, for example, pick up kids from school or make a quick purchase in a store.
Tip: all Parkschein markings must be clear and permanent. Always use a ballpoint pen or similar.
The paid vouchers
You can display combinations of these paid vouchers to reach whatever parking duration you require, as long as you don’t exceed the maximum allowable stay.
So to park for 2.5 hours you could use one yellow and one red voucher. Or five red vouchers. If you display more than one voucher, put the same starting time on each one.
The paid vouchers consist of four columns for you to mark the relevant date and time you started parking.
The first column is marked “Monat” (month) and here, well, you have to mark the current month with a cross, like this:
The first month is Jänner (January), the second is Feber (February) etc.
The second column (“Tag”) is for the day of the month, which you also mark with a cross. Write out the year in the box marked “Jahr”, too:
The third and fourth columns are where you put the start time. The third column is for the hour (“Stunde”) and uses the 24 hour clock. The fourth column is for the minutes (“Min.”), where you only have the choice of 0, 15, 30 or 45.
This means you mark the time as the start of the next quarter hour. So if you park at 7.06am, you would mark the voucher as hour 7 and minute 15. If you park at 1.55pm, you would mark the voucher at hour 14 and minute 0 (= 2pm).
I filled out this voucher at 6.25pm:
Cunning readers will wonder whether you then need a Parkschein at all, if the following quarter of an hour is already outside the restricted hours of the Kurzparkzone. Unfortunately, you still need to mark (and thereby use up) a voucher in this case, too.
Where do you put them?
Put the Parkschein where it can be seen clearly by any official checking cars, i.e. put it just behind the windshield.