Building and Maintenance Costs of Multi-storey Car Parks
Ministry of National DevelopmentSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns the comparative costs of building and maintaining multi-storey versus surface car parks, as raised by Mr Gan Thiam Poh. Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong responded that multi-storey car parks cost three to five times more than surface car parks on a per lot basis. He explained that while maintenance accounts for 20% of annual expenditure, total costs are rising due to construction overheads, capital expenditures, and aging infrastructure. Even with revised parking charges, the Housing and Development Board is expected to continue running a deficit in its car park operations. This deficit was estimated to reach approximately $100 million annually if charges had not been increased to address the rising expenditure.
Transcript
61 Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for National Development (a) what is the average cost of building a multi-storey car park and surface car park respectively; (b) what is the monthly maintenance charge for a car park; and (c) what is the average subsidy for each car park if the monthly parking charge is insufficient to cover the replacement and maintenance cost.
Mr Lawrence Wong: Construction costs vary for different car parks built over the years as they depend on factors, such as the prevailing cost of construction materials and site-specific constraints. In general, it costs about three to five times more to build a multi-storey car park compared to a surface car park, on a per lot basis.
On average, general maintenance, improvement and repair costs take up about 20% of yearly car park expenditure. However, parking charges do not cover only maintenance costs. The bulk of expenditure for Housing and Development Board (HDB) car parks comes from building works as well as other operating costs, such as car park management and enforcement. The total costs of building, operating and maintaining car parks have increased over the years because of rising overheads in the construction industry, more capital expenditures for new and existing car parks, and additional repair works required to maintain an increasing number of ageing car parks.
Last year, we estimated that without any increase in car park charges, HDB would incur a deficit of around $100 million annually in the coming years. Even with the revised parking charges, we expect HDB to continue to run a deficit in the coming years.