City Guard Ranking

The ranking is part of an ongoing academic article analysing the total cost of illegal parking in Poland.

The ranking was created based on an analysis of 10,000 pages of documents obtained through hundreds of freedom of information requests submitted to city offices, municipal guard units, the police, the fire brigade, ministries and paid parking zone operators.

The aim of this comparison is to take an objective look at the effectiveness and costs of these formations, away from common opinions.

Authors:

• Szymon Nieradka – Urban Parking Agenda 693 373 068
• dr hab. Piotr Wójcik, prof. ucz. – University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences
• dr Maciej Świtała – University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences

Press materials

City Guard Ranking in Poland

The ranking covers 18 Polish provincial cities (voivodeship capitals). We assess not only the effectiveness of the city guard itself, but also the local authority's approach to parking policy: the budget allocated to the guard, the proportion of penalties imposed, and the fiscal aggressiveness of paid parking zones.

The maximum score is 1200 points. None of the guards studied is truly effective at enforcing parking regulations – therefore the ranking starts from place 2. First place remains vacant.

Analysis of score components for individual city guards. Progress bars show the score in each category (bar length = points scored / max points). below average above average

Introduction: From one to 1,300 officers – the landscape of municipal guards

At the end of 2024, Poland had a total of 407 municipal and communal guard units (referred to as SM throughout the ranking), with a combined provision of over 8,661 posts.

At the national level, there are enormous disparities in guard size. In stark contrast stand the largest units – such as SM Warsaw, which alone had 1,908 posts (employing 1,616 people), and SM Kraków with 585 posts (employing 580 people). On the other hand, many of the 407 units are one- or two-person formations. Single-officer municipal guards operate, for example, in Nowe Miasto (Mazovian Voivodeship), Krajenka (Greater Poland Voivodeship) or Lewin Brzeski (Opole Voivodeship).

For the purposes of this ranking, however, we focus exclusively on voivodeship capitals and the rate of guards per 100,000 residents. Here, a clear leader emerges. Only in Warsaw are there more than 60 guards per 100,000 residents. At the other end of the scale is the Lubusz Voivodeship. In Gorzów Wielkopolski and Zielona Góra this rate is below 15.

How much does the city guard cost us?

A comparison of these units' budgets is also interesting – particularly in relation to city size, i.e. the annual budget per resident. The leader here is Warsaw with a city guard budget of 140 PLN per resident. In second place is Kraków with 133 PLN.

The anti-leader of this comparison is again the Lubusz Voivodeship. In Gorzów it is 19 PLN, and in Zielona Góra... 3 PLN. The extremely low figure in Zielona Góra stems not only from the small size of the formation. It is the only guard in the voivodeship capitals that is not a separate budgetary unit, but merely a department within the city office. This means that the actual budget of the unit is probably closer to that of Gorzów.

Posts and budget at a glance

Fines: Are fines used to patch city budgets?

The fine is the city guard's key tool for maintaining public order and safety in local communities. Of course, it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of a guard solely by how quickly it issues fines. But an analysis of the collected data reveals a surprising picture.

Every eight hours, a guard officer in the most effective city guard in Poland issues a fine. In many cities – Warsaw, Wrocław and Łódź included – officers issue an average of 5–6 fines per month.

Taking into account the average fine amount for road traffic offences, approximately 149 PLN, a picture of the inefficiency of these formations emerges.

The Szczecin anomaly: profit over safety?

Deserving separate discussion is the particular case of the average fine amount in Szczecin, which is twice the national average. How is this possible?

An analysis of the fine schedule, conversations with the formation's leadership, and field observation provide the answer.

The Municipal Guard in Szczecin receives pressure from the City Office to self-finance to the greatest possible extent. Unlike Poznań or Lublin, however, it achieves this not through efficiency, but by concentrating primarily on the most "lucrative" offences.

According to the fine schedule, these are parking within an intersection and parking in a disabled spot. The unfortunate effect is that officers are "blind" to offences that pose safety risks (e.g. parking in front of a pedestrian crossing), but will stop of their own accord at every blue envelope.

Does the city guard pay for itself? Debunking the "milking drivers" myth

A common argument in debates about the usefulness of city guards is their cost to the city budget. The following chart shows what percentage of a unit's annual budget is "returned" to the city's coffers in the form of fine revenues. This figure illustrates the extent to which the city guard "pays for itself", though it must be remembered that the formation's overriding purpose is to maintain order, not to generate profit.

What does it cost to issue a single fine?

In the following comparison, we examine the relationship between the city guard budget and the number of fines and warnings issued. In a broad simplification, this is an attempt to calculate the cost of issuing a single fine or warning. All fines are taken into account in this comparison – including those unrelated to parking or road traffic.

The conclusions are surprising. The cost of issuing a single fine, calculated in this way, exceeds one thousand PLN. The City of Warsaw pays its city guard 1,707 PLN for every fine or warning issued.

We are aware of the nature of this data. City guards were not established to issue fines. However, set against the fact that 76% of their activity concerns illegal parking, and that fines and warnings are virtually their only form of enforcement, the numbers are striking.

Conclusions

1. The average guard officer issues only a handful of fines per month.
2. City guards in Poland are chronically in deficit. The belief that they "milk drivers to patch the budget" is a myth.
3. The average traffic fine (PRD) is merely 149 PLN – a direct consequence of the fine schedule not having been updated for 22 years.
4. The complex fine procedure, ill-suited to the scale of illegal parking, makes these formations extremely ineffective.
5. The cost of issuing a fine by the city guard (defined as the budget divided by the number of fines and warnings issued) ranges from 800 PLN to 7,000 PLN with an average of 1,700 PLN.

Staff & Salaries: Data on the number of officers, median salaries and vacancies

Analysing the number of fines alone is not enough. It is crucial to understand who issues them and under what conditions officers work. The number of posts "on paper" often diverges from reality. Vacancies, civilian employees and salary levels are factors that directly affect the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of city guards.

Salaries: Kraków leads, eastern Poland at the bottom

Work in the city guard is not among the best-paid, although clear differences between cities are visible. The leader is Kraków with a median of almost 10,000 PLN gross. It should be noted, however, that these figures may include seniority supplements or bonuses, and the "bare" salary may be lower.

At the other end of the scale are cities such as Olsztyn and Szczecin, where the median earnings hover around 5,000 PLN gross. Given the nature of the service – working in difficult conditions, stress and risk – these rates are not competitive in today's labour market.

Note: in two cities (Bydgoszcz and Rzeszów) we were unable to obtain median salary data. Both formations stated they do not hold this data. For Rzeszów we have data for 2023 (only 4,372 PLN).

Vacancies – a problem for large cities

Low pay combined with demanding work and a lack of social prestige (or even outright hostility) means city guards face enormous recruitment difficulties. In Warsaw, Wrocław and Gdańsk, almost one in five guard posts is vacant. The record holder is Opole, where nearly 30% of posts are unfilled.

A high vacancy rate means that existing patrols are overloaded and response time to residents' reports lengthens. It is a vicious cycle – fewer guards means lower effectiveness, which leads to greater resident frustration and a further decline in the formation's prestige.

Guards vs Civilians: who works in the city guard?

Not every post in a city guard means a uniform on the street. Part of the staff are civilian employees – city monitoring operators, administrators, accountants and HR staff. On average, civilian employees make up about 20% of all staff in voivodeship capitals.

It is worth noting the proportions. In Opole and Białystok the share of civilians is higher, reaching or even exceeding 30%. This may suggest more developed administrative structures or outsourcing of certain tasks (e.g. monitoring) to civilians, which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it frees uniformed officers for field work.

Conclusions

1. The city guard officer's job is poorly paid (except in Kraków), resulting in chronic staffing shortages.
2. In Poland's largest cities (Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdańsk) an average of 15–20% of guard posts are vacant.
3. One in five city guard employees is a civilian.

Warnings: Warnings vs fines – different philosophies of law enforcement

An analysis of the ratio of warnings to fines reveals significant differences in city guards' approaches to law enforcement. Given the very low fines for stopping violations (most commonly 100 PLN, an amount unchanged for 22 years), even a fine has become a form of warning. Particularly so since, in the case of public transport violations or failure to pay for parking in a zone, higher penalty amounts apply (up to 550 PLN) and there is no option to issue a warning.

For this reason, city guards that issue more warnings than fines are treated in this ranking as less effective. If we show no leniency towards public transport passengers and honest drivers using the SPP, it is hard to justify the liberal use of warnings.

The ratio of warnings to fines differs dramatically between cities. The anti-leaders of this ranking are SM Zielona Góra and Gorzów Wielkopolski, issuing 5 and 2.5 warnings respectively for every fine. At the other end of the scale are SM Gdańsk and Poznań, which issue 15 and 11 fines for every warning.

Conclusions

1. On average, one in every three sanctions against an illegally parked driver is a warning.
2. There are enormous differences in approaches to warnings – some cities issue one warning for over ten fines (Gdańsk and Poznań). But there are also cities that issue more warnings than fines (Zielona Góra, Gorzów, Toruń, Opole and Olsztyn).
3. Given the low parking fines (~150 PLN) and the absence of warnings as an instrument for disciplining public transport passengers or paid-parking-zone drivers, the liberal use of warnings must be assessed as clearly negative.

Wheel Clamps: Slip a note under the windshield wiper or clamp the wheels?

Applying a wheel clamp is extra work for a guard officer. It has to be brought to the scene, fitted, and a notice filled in. Then the officer must return to remove it. From a "fine productivity" perspective, slipping notices under windshield wipers seems much faster.

However, the clamp has other merits – educational value and the inevitability of punishment. A notice under the windshield can be ignored. There are a number of ways to avoid a fine, including the most popular: the "foreign plates" trick (see the Urban Parking Agenda proposal). The clamp immobilises the vehicle and forces the driver into direct confrontation with the officer.

Olsztyn, Kielce and Lublin – leaders in diligence

If we accept that fitting a clamp is extra effort, then officers in Olsztyn, Kielce and Lublin are clear leaders in diligence. A typical officer in Olsztyn fits 6.8 clamps per month. In Kielce it is 6.5, and in Lublin 6.3.

This is a high result, given that the clamp is just one of their tools. A high number of clamps per post shows that commanders in these cities prioritise the quality and inevitability of punishment, not just the "quick statistic" of notices under windshields.

In several cities (Zielona Góra, Gorzów and Rzeszów) clamps are not used at all. Białystok and Wrocław use clamps in homeopathic quantities. Warsaw also performs very poorly – about half a clamp per month per officer.

Conclusions

1. Applying wheel clamps increases the inevitability and impact of punishment. In the context of the fine schedule for parking offences not being updated for years, city guards that use clamps should be assessed positively.
2. The leaders in the ranking of clamps per guard per month are Olsztyn, Kielce, Lublin and Poznań.
3. Wheel clamps are not used (or used to a negligible degree) by city guards in six cities: Zielona Góra, Gorzów, Rzeszów, Białystok, Wrocław and Warsaw. In all these cities a typical officer does not fit even one clamp per day.

Towing: The ultimate tool against reckless drivers – the reality

Having a vehicle towed is the most severe sanction an illegally parked driver can face. It not only involves a heavy fine, but also the costs of the tow truck and impound, and a loss of time. The law permits towing in strictly defined cases, including when a vehicle is parked in a prohibited place and obstructs traffic or poses a safety risk, occupies a disabled space without authorisation, or is standing on a T-24 sign with a "tow zone" plate.

Warsaw – Poland's towing capital

The numbers are relentless. Warsaw accounts for nearly half of all tows in voivodeship capitals. 16,482 towed vehicles is an impressive figure, even accounting for the city's size. By comparison, Wrocław – second in the ranking – towed just over 3,000 vehicles.

The disparity is so large that we also analysed the number of removed vehicles per 100,000 residents. Even after this normalisation, the ranking and conclusions do not change significantly. Warsaw still dominates, towing twice as many vehicles as Wrocław in second place. Additionally, it becomes apparent that being "the victim" of having your vehicle removed from the road in Poland is very unlikely.

Why do officers tow vehicles?

An analysis of the reasons for towing sheds interesting light on the strategies of individual commands.

"T-24 sign": Over 60% of all vehicle removals concern parking on a prohibition with a "tow truck" sign. Why? This is administratively the simplest procedure – the sign is unambiguous and arguing with the driver is difficult.

"Traffic obstruction": About 16% of cases concern obstructing traffic. This is also a relatively straightforward grounds. One vehicle blocks another.

"Wrecks": Almost 10% of cases concern the removal of so-called wrecks. The procedure for their removal is lengthy and complex.

"Disabled spots": Over 4% of cases concern parking in blue-envelope disabled spots. Here, too, the regulations are clear.

"Creating a hazard": Fewer than half a percent of cases concern creating a hazard. This is a very alarming figure, because it is precisely this category that enables the removal of vehicles from in front of pedestrian crossings, for example. Unfortunately, road traffic law does not define the concept of "creating a hazard", and this is where officers face the greatest risk of court challenge.

"Exceeding permissible total weight": In Poland, heavy vehicles are practically never removed from pavements. The regulation on permissible gross weight on pavements (less than 2.5 tonnes) is a dead letter.

Conclusions

1. In Poland, vehicles are towed very rarely. Warsaw accounts for as many as 2/3 of all towing cases.
2. The most common grounds for removal (over 60% of cases) is stopping on a prohibited spot with a T-24 sign (showing a tow truck symbol).
3. In Poland, vehicles creating a hazard (e.g. parked in front of pedestrian crossings) and those damaging pavements (with gross weight over 2.5 tonnes) are not towed. The reason is the lack of a definition of "creating a hazard", which opens the door to arbitrary interpretation of these regulations.
4. The procedure for removing wrecks from the roadway is very complex and multi-stage. Hence the low effectiveness of city guards in this area. Outside the roadway (e.g. on internal roads and car parks) the city guard has no powers at all.

Response Time: How many months does it take to issue a single fine?

A cross-sectional analysis of response times is not straightforward, as there is no standardised way of reporting this data.

In the media, information sometimes appears that waiting for the city guard in Warsaw can take several dozen hours. On the other hand, the fact that the city guard in Szczecin arrives within one or two hours is not necessarily a good sign. It turns out that this guard uses the technique of not answering the phone until a free patrol is available – thereby improving its statistics.

For this reason, we decided to use data collected by the Uprzejmie Donoszę service. Individual reports have a recorded time of creation, time of the offence, and – crucially – the time of submission to the city guard unit. In cases where the city guard informs the reporting person that the matter has been concluded, this can also be recorded in the system.

The above information allows us to measure the time from submission of a report to the conclusion of the matter by fine or warning.

This technique has two limitations. The first is that for some cities the number of reports is insufficient to draw conclusions. The second limitation arises from the fact that some units systematically discourage residents from submitting violation reports and do not provide information about the conclusion of cases. In such a situation, even with a relatively large number of reports, there is very little information about concluded cases, which again makes it impossible to draw reliable conclusions.

For this reason, the chart below does not include all cities. Cities not included are those where city guards either actively discourage reporting – for example by requiring the witness to appear in person for each individual report – or do not inform about the status of case closure.

It is also not known whether the user changes the status immediately upon receiving a letter or other information from the city guard, or for example two weeks later. There is also probably a group of users who ignore these letters and do not change statuses at all.

Nevertheless, for cities where the number of reports is sufficiently large, a comparison is possible.

Cities for which fewer than 1,000 reports were registered in Uprzejmie Donoszę are Olsztyn, Zielona Góra, Kielce, Lublin, Rzeszów and Szczecin. These are cities where city guards require the witness of an offence to appear in person for each individual report. This effectively discourages residents from reporting offences.

Informing about case closure

Interesting light is shed on cooperation between residents and city guards by the ratio of closed to total reports. This coefficient determines what share of residents' reports was marked as closed (regardless of the outcome – whether it was a fine, warning, or other). This means that the city guard made the effort to inform the resident about the conclusion of proceedings.

Conclusions

1. The fine procedure for parking offences takes many months even for the most efficient guards.
2. Over seven months is the average waiting time for a case to be concluded in Warsaw.
3. Some city guards actively sabotage attempts to submit violation reports (e.g. by summoning the witness to an interview for every individual report).
4. City guards are reluctant to inform about the status of concluded cases.

Police: Does the police issue parking fines?

Data on police activity is very fragmentary. Some police commands refused to provide data, others supplied only aggregate information about all road offences. Only some units provided detailed statistics specifically on parking-related offences.

Based on the data received, two coefficients were estimated:

• Proportion of parking fines to all road fines: 4.3%
• Proportion of parking fines to registered parking offences: 24.2%

This made it possible to estimate the missing data for the remaining cities. Where it was possible to calculate the number of parking fines for a given city using both coefficients, the higher value was used.

Fines for driving on pavements and across pedestrian crossings

The police have considerably broader powers than the city guard. In the context of illegal parking, key is the ability to impose sanctions for driving along a pavement or across a pedestrian crossing. The city guard can only fine for driving on the pavement... on a bicycle. The police have no such restrictions.

We checked the statistics on this phenomenon at the National Police Headquarters (KGP). We received the following figures:

• In the first 3 quarters of 2025, 21,575 offences related to driving along a pavement and 14,951 offences related to driving across a pedestrian crossing were recorded. That is an estimated 48,695 offences for the full year 2025.
• In the whole of 2025, 1,624 fines were issued for both these offences, and 669 cases were referred to court.

The KGP was unable to provide the number of warnings. We can, however, calculate that only 4.7% of cases ended with a fine or a court referral. This means that in 95.3% of cases officers issued a warning or were unable to conclude the matter in any other way.

Conclusions

1. The police are involved in parking enforcement to a significantly lesser degree than city guards.
2. The lack of uniform data-collection standards in the police makes analysis of the phenomenon difficult.
3. The burden of combating illegal parking rests almost entirely on local authorities and city guards.
4. The police issue warnings en masse to drivers driving on pavements and across pedestrian crossings.

Field Research: What does manually counting cars in city centres reveal?

Analyses carried out between 2012 and 2024 paint a picture of cities grappling with the chronic problem of illegal parking. The phenomenon is strongest in areas with a large deficit of parking spaces, but – interestingly – also occurs where free spaces are available but paid. Drivers frequently make a conscious choice to park on grass verges, near intersections or on pavements in order to avoid paid parking zone (SPP) charges, counting on the low effectiveness of the city guard.

In many cities, the areas with the highest rate of violations are those directly adjacent to paid zones, which become a free "hinterland" for people working in the city centre. The scale of violations ranges from a few to as many as several dozen percent of all vehicles found in a given area.

Methodology

The data presented in the report is the result of research processes going beyond standard fine statistics. The following techniques were used in the cities analysed:

• Rotation and Occupancy Measurements (Manual and Automatic): Use of foot patrols and ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) systems to continuously monitor street occupancy at intervals (usually 30-minute or hourly).
• Mobile Mapping and Scanning (CityScanner): Use in Rzeszów and Warsaw (Mokotów district) of vehicles equipped with vision systems for automated vehicle detection and payment verification, enabling control on a mass scale impossible to achieve through foot patrols.
• Index Analysis: Calculation of "over-occupancy" indicators (occupancy > 100%), which mathematically prove the occurrence of illegal parking as a physical necessity in conditions of parking space shortage.

The scale of illegal parking in numbers

The table below presents specific numbers of vehicles parked in violation of the law, identified during field research.

Note: Due to different research methodologies and, above all, different study areas, these numbers cannot be compared directly. That is, the scale of illegal parking in Łódź is not 20 times higher than in Poznań. The study area is simply different.

The city-wide estimate is calculated based on the proportion that the studied area bears to the whole city. For example, if 1,000 illegally parked vehicles were found in a studied part of the city inhabited by about 5% of its residents, the estimated figure for the whole city would be 20,000 vehicles (1,000 / 0.05).

Only by combining these measurements with the number of fines issued by the city guard and police does the picture become truly revealing.

Up to 60% of vehicles park illegally. Examples from Polish cities

The scale of the problem becomes even clearer when we look at the percentage share of "parking pirates" in the total number of vehicles.

• Wrocław: In zone A (strict city centre), the average share of vehicles parked in violation of the law was as high as 45%, and in zone B – 37%.
• Kielce: Illegal parking accounted for 23% of all available parking spaces.
• Gdańsk: The average share of illegally parked vehicles is about 20%. But locally it exceeds 60%.
• GZM (Gliwice/Tarnowskie Góry): In Gliwice (sub-zone A) during peak hours one in three vehicles (33%) was parked illegally. In Tarnowskie Góry and Zabrze this rate also exceeded 30%.
• Toruń: Zone occupancy levels fluctuate between 120% and 152%.
• Rzeszów: On Zamkowa Street, the average number of illegally parked vehicles was more than twice as high as those parked legally (at peak times up to four times as high).
• Szczecin: 1,085 vehicles were identified parked on roadways in a manner posing a safety risk or obstructing traffic, of which 25% (approx. 270 vehicles) were parked within 10 metres of a pedestrian crossing or intersection.

Driver impunity and service helplessness

The authors of the studies explicitly point to the low effectiveness of the services responsible for order:

• Rzeszów: "a large number of vehicles parked in an improper manner were noted during the measurements", "it is absolutely necessary to seek to tighten up the paid parking zone [...] and to pay particular attention to the enforcement of the regulations in this area".
• Gliwice and Chorzów (GZM): "Many drivers avoid parking charges in the zone by parking in violation of the regulations. This is most likely due to the belief that the risk of receiving a fine is very low".
• Kielce: "In order to prevent illegal parking [...] the legal measures provided for in such situations must above all be applied consistently, such as frequent imposition of penalties".
• Kraków: Public consultation reports see residents noting: "Possible difficulties with enforcing the zone's assumptions [...] (the city guard is already unable to respond adequately to all violations)". Another strong voice states: "Let us start respecting Art. 47 of the Road Traffic Act – at present it is a fiction".
• Wrocław: Recommendations for the city include the need to increase the frequency of patrols by law-enforcement services, especially during midday hours.
• Toruń: The report points to the very low responsiveness of the city guard despite numerous reports from zone controllers. Vehicles can stand unpunished for many hours on prohibited spots.

The costs of chaos: from blocked pavements to threats to life

According to the report authors, illegal parking is not merely an aesthetic problem, but above all:

• A safety hazard: Vehicles parked too close to pedestrian crossings and intersections (within 10 m) drastically reduce visibility, which is one of the most common causes of violations (e.g. 25% of cases in Szczecin).
• Pedestrian paralysis: Blocking pavements (leaving less than 1.5 m width) forces pedestrians into the roadway.
• Blocking emergency services: Parking near driveways and gates obstructs access by ambulances and the fire brigade, which may have tragic consequences during rescue operations.
• Economic losses for the city: Vehicles parked illegally outside designated SPP spaces do not pay parking fees, depleting the municipal budget.
• Space degradation: Destruction of lawns and green spaces by parked vehicles.
• Artificial congestion: Drivers circling in search of a free (often illegal) spot generate unnecessary traffic, increasing exhaust emissions and other residents' frustration.

Conclusions

1. The scale of illegal parking is massive – from 20% to over 60% of vehicles in the studied areas park in violation of the law. These are not isolated incidents, but the norm in Polish city centres.
2. Drivers consciously avoid charges – the phenomenon is strongest directly at SPP boundaries, indicating deliberate risk calculation rather than ignorance of the regulations.
3. The authors of all reports explicitly identify low enforcement effectiveness as the main cause of the scale of the phenomenon.
4. Illegal parking is a threat to life, not just a violation – one in four illegally parked vehicles in Szczecin posed a hazard.

Efficiency: What is the probability of receiving a fine for illegal parking?

In the Field Research section we collected data on the number of vehicles parked illegally in selected parts of Polish cities. We also estimated the number of illegally parked vehicles city-wide. In the Fines section we analysed how many fines individual city guards issue per year. We also include data on fines issued by the police for parking offences.

A natural question therefore arises: what is the probability that we will receive a fine for illegal parking? – and not only from the city guard, but from anyone at all.

Why can't this be compared directly?

Field research covers small parts of cities – one street, one district, one zone. The number of fines comes from city-wide data. Comparing these figures directly would be a methodological error.

We can, however, define two probability boundaries:

• Upper bound (Max) – assumes that the N vehicles from the studied area are all illegally parked vehicles in the city. This assumption is fundamentally false, but gives a value that is certainly higher than the real probability. Formula: (daily fines) / N. We calculate it only for cities where field research covered at least 5% of residents.
• Lower bound (Min) – scales the denominator by the estimated share of residents in the studied area relative to the whole city. The smaller the fragment studied, the lower the result.

Both values are given jointly for city guard and police.

Interpreting the results

The table shows two types of estimates. For cities where field research covered a larger share of residents (Szczecin, Kielce, Łódź, Gorzów), we give a min ~ max range: the lower value accounts for the scale of the studied area, the upper value optimistically assumes that the studied fragment exhausts the entire problem. For cities with a small study area (Rzeszów, Poznań, Warsaw) we show only the lower estimate (~ min), as the upper bound would be so inflated as to be analytically meaningless.

Even the upper bound does not exceed 4% for any city (Szczecin: 3.7%). For most cities, the maximum falls in the 1–2% range. It is worth noting that Poznań and Warsaw – despite issuing 123 and 237 fines per day respectively – perform similarly to smaller cities once the enormous scale of illegal parking estimated for the whole city is taken into account.

Gorzów stands out with the lowest level of enforcement: just 5 fines per day translates into a range of 0.07–0.9%, the lowest result in the comparison.

Conclusions

1. The probability of a fine for illegal parking – from the city guard and police combined – is below 1% per day in most cities studied, even under optimistic assumptions.
2. In none of the seven cities did the upper probability bound exceed 4%. The real probability is many times lower.
3. The low risk of a fine is a rational reason why drivers habitually park illegally. It is not a lack of awareness of the regulations – it is risk calculation.

Paid Parking Zone: How does the efficiency of a guard compare to a zone inspector?

The Paid Parking Zone (SPP) is a fee-collection system for parking managed by operators selected through tender or by municipal units. In addition to city guard fines, SPP operators can impose additional fees on drivers who park without a valid ticket or who exceed the permitted parking time.

In this section we analyse two key financial metrics of the zones, based on data obtained from operators through freedom of information requests:

• Total parking fees collected – total parking revenue per resident, broken down into parking fees and additional fees for violations of the zone rules. This allows cities of different sizes to be compared.
• Total additional fees collected for violating parking rules – additional fees imposed by the SPP operator, compared with the value of illegal-parking fines issued by the city guard in the same city.

Note: Financial SPP data could not be obtained for two cities: Zielona Góra (did not respond to the freedom of information request) and Lublin (referred to the budget resolution from which the separate values for individual SPP metrics cannot be read).

Parking fee revenue

Warsaw, Kraków and Poznań generate by far the most parking fee revenue per resident. The clear gap between these cities and the rest of the field results from both the greater scale of the zones and higher hourly rates. A second reason is that these are cities with a large number of tourists and visitors from outside the agglomeration. It is they who pay hourly parking rates, generating up to 80% of SPP operators' revenue.

The lowest values are in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Kielce and Bydgoszcz. The orange portion of each bar represents fees for violating parking rules; the purple portion – parking fees. Both metrics are independent of each other.

Who collects more? Guard fines vs SPP additional fees

The following chart compares in absolute values the two streams of money collected from drivers for parking violations: the total value of illegal-parking fines issued by the city guard and the total amount of additional fees collected by the SPP operator.

SPP violation fees vs city guard fines

A city guard fine is a criminal-law instrument – imposed by an officer for a road traffic offence. An SPP additional fee is a civil-law instrument – issued by a zone controller for failure to pay or for exceeding the permitted parking time. Both mechanisms are meant to encourage drivers to comply with the rules, yet belong to entirely different legal orders.

City guard fine:

1. Paid by drivers who have parked illegally
2. Imposed by an officer for a road traffic offence
3. The amount of a city guard fine is fixed rigidly by the Prime Minister in the form of a so-called fine schedule, which has not been updated since 2003
4. Imposed once for the offence, regardless of how long the vehicle has been standing
5. Paid by the perpetrator of the offence, who must be identified by the guard
6. In practice does not apply to drivers of vehicles with foreign registration plates
7. Instead of a fine, a warning can be issued

SPP additional fee:

1. Paid by drivers who have parked correctly
2. Imposed by the zone operator for failure to pay or for exceeding the permitted parking time
3. The amount of the SPP additional fee is set by the city council in a resolution and updated fairly regularly
4. Imposed for each day of parking
5. Paid by the vehicle owner
6. No warnings in this system

The table below compares both these charges and in the final column presents the coefficient: penalties for correctly-parked drivers (SPP) / penalties for illegally-parked drivers.

Ranking of local authority unfairness

Let us look more closely at this coefficient on a separate chart. Here we can see each local authority's approach to penalising drivers.

In Opole, drivers who park correctly but commit a minor violation – for example, they are late paying or mix up the zone type – pay almost 9 times higher penalties than drivers who ignore parking regulations altogether.

Only in one voivodeship capital do guard fines exceed additional fees in the zone (in Olsztyn).

Conclusions

1. Correctly-parked drivers pay more than those who violate parking regulations.
2. Local authorities independently set penalties for failure to pay in the SPP and update them regularly. The fine schedule has been frozen for 22 years.
3. The average Warsaw driver pays 143 PLN per year for legal parking in the zone, 33 PLN for parking correctly but forgetting to pay, and 8 PLN in fines for illegal parking.
4. Only in one voivodeship capital do guard fines exceed additional fees in the zone (Olsztyn).

Methodology: Methodology, data sources, calculation methods

The report was created on the basis of a detailed analysis of public data on the operation of city guards in Poland's largest cities. Below we present the methodology for data collection and analysis.

Data sources and scope

• Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to 80 city guards and 3 police precincts in all 83 cities above 50,000 residents regarding unit activities related to illegal parking in 2024.
• FOI requests to 83 city offices regarding existing studies on the implementation of parking policy (26 offices had such studies). Data for 2024.
• FOI requests to 63 road managers regarding paid parking zone statistics (51 responses). Data for 2024.
• FOI requests to 18 city police precincts in all voivodeship capitals regarding police activities related to illegal parking. Data for 2024.
• FOI requests to 16 provincial police headquarters where city guard statistics for the whole voivodeship are collected. Data for 2024.
• FOI request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration regarding reports from all municipal and communal guards in Poland for 2024 (407 units).
• FOI request to the National Fire Service Headquarters regarding obstructions to rescue operations caused by illegally parked vehicles.
• Budget data for voivodeship capitals for 2024 published in local government financial information systems.
• Data from the Public Information Bulletin (BIP) of local government units.

Methodology for creating the ranking using synthetic indicators

Synthetic indicators are built to describe multidimensional phenomena with a single index – for example social development, quality of life, regional competitiveness or safety levels. The starting point is always a conceptual framework: defining which dimensions (e.g. economic, social, environmental) are relevant and which measurable detailed indicators best represent them.

Since detailed indicators are usually measured in different units, normalisation procedures are applied, e.g. transformation to a 0–1 scale, z-score standardisation, scaling relative to the best result (ratio-to-best) or rescaling to a 0–100 range, as in many contemporary social indices. At this stage it is also decided whether a higher value of a given indicator is "better" or "worse" and accordingly those with an unfavourable direction (e.g. mortality, unemployment) are reversed. Weights are then assigned – equal or based on expert or statistical analysis (e.g. PCA). The normalised and weighted indicators are then combined into a synthetic index, most commonly using arithmetic or geometric mean, less often more complex formulas that limit the possibility of a very weak result in one dimension being compensated by a very strong result in another.

Good practice includes conducting sensitivity analyses, i.e. checking how a change in the normalisation method, weights or aggregation method affects the final values of the index and the ranking of units. Parallel analysis of the individual indicators is also recommended, so that the synthetic indicator does not replace information about which specific areas a given unit performs well or poorly in.

Performance indicators for city guards in the area of parking regulation enforcement

In the existing academic literature, studies directly devoted to the effectiveness of city guard / local police activities in the area of parking offences are surprisingly few. This gap is partly filled by European project reports and institutional audits, e.g. Park4SUMP materials on the role of enforcement in parking policy, or reports by national auditors analysing fee collection and control organisation. Additionally, an important part of contemporary knowledge is provided by industry sources – blog posts and white papers from technology companies and parking system operators – where proposed KPI indicators and patrol management strategies actually used in cities are described in detail. These constitute a valuable source of knowledge about practical solutions and metrics.

The first group of indicators concerns the productivity of officers and patrols. It includes the number of parking fines, clamps and tows per guard over a given period, as well as intensity indicators such as the number of fines in relation to hours of duty, number of vehicles checked, and average time between fines. These indicators are primarily used to diagnose workload, patrol organisation and spatial distribution of checks, not to set "performance norms".

The second dimension covers the quality and proportionality of interventions. The ratio of fines to warnings, broken down by officers, areas and offence categories, is analysed to detect differences in sanction practice. Additionally, fine quality indicators are used: the percentage of fines annulled on formal grounds, the percentage of appeals and the share of fines upheld, which inform about the reliability of documentation, correctness of legal classification and proportionality of response.

The third group of indicators measures the effects of guard activities in terms of compliance with regulations and traffic safety. Key is the compliance rate, understood as the share of vehicles meeting system requirements (paid parking, no time-limit violation, no prohibition violation), determined on the basis of field checks and data from parking systems and automatic plate recognition.

The methodology also includes the financial dimension and spatial justice. The financial part analyses the relationship between fine revenues and the personnel and operational costs of enforcement, as well as the surplus of revenues over the cost of handling a single fine, while simultaneously monitoring safety and compliance indicators, so that "fiscal profitability" does not become the dominant assessment criterion. The spatial-social part examines the distribution of fines, clamps and tows in relation to the socio-demographic and infrastructural structure of the city, as well as the results of resident surveys on the perceived fairness and proportionality of actions, which allows the aspect of equitable burden distribution and trust in the city guard to be taken into account.

In the case of Polish cities, the application of the full set of indicators was limited by data availability. For the city guard ranking, only those measures that could be calculated for all analysed units on the basis of operational and reporting data collected in the project were used, in accordance with the descriptions provided for each metric.

Ranking metrics used

The total score pool in the ranking is 1200 points. Each metric is normalised to a 0–100 scale and then multiplied by a weight, which determines the maximum number of points achievable.

Metric weights

Most metrics have a weight of 1 (max. 100 pts). There are two types of exceptions to this rule.

Efficiency (weight 2, max. 200 pts) is the only metric with a doubled weight. The number of parking fines per guard per month is in our assessment the most direct measure of operational effectiveness – which is why it weighs more heavily in the ranking than any other single indicator.

Towing is split into three separate metrics (general towing, from pedestrian crossings, wrecks), each with a weight of 1. The combined weight of towing is therefore 3 – higher than Efficiency – which reflects our conviction that removing vehicles posing a real hazard is equally important to fining. The split into categories also allows guards that tow vehicles exclusively for unpaid charges to be distinguished from those that respond to blocking of pedestrian crossings or remove wrecks.

Four metrics have a weight of 0.5 (max. 50 pts): Budget, Traffic Fines Share, Fine Cost and Salary. These are supporting indicators that partially duplicate information contained in other metrics. Fine cost is the quotient of the budget and the number of fines – both components already have their own places in the ranking. Budget is strongly correlated with staffing. These metrics enrich the picture but should not dominate the assessment.

Normalisation ranges

By default, the guard with the lowest observed coefficient receives 0 points, and the guard with the highest receives the maximum. There are exceptions: if it is possible to define an objective expected value, it serves as the maximum points threshold – even if no guard achieves it.

An example is Leniency: a guard that issues fines in ≥ 90% of interventions (warnings ≤ 10%) receives 100 pts. Guards where warnings account for more than half of interventions receive 0 pts – regardless of how far they fall from the worst result in the dataset. Similarly, Unfairness works: 0 pts is awarded to any city where SPP additional fees are at least three times higher than guard fines – several cities reached this threshold. Opole exceeded this indicator more than eightfold, but does not receive additional negative points: the scale of degradation above the threshold does not differentiate the result. For Civic Cooperation, thresholds of 0–100% were used as a natural boundary: closing 100% of reports from the response-time system is the maximum possible.

In three metrics it was necessary to apply thresholds for another reason: a statistical anomaly caused by Zielona Góra. That formation is not an independent unit – it operates within the structures of the City Office, which artificially deflates its budget to about 3 PLN per resident (compared to a median of over 40 PLN in the remaining cities) and inflates the cost of issuing a fine to almost 7,000 PLN (the other 17 cities fall below 3,500 PLN). Using pure min-max would distort the scale for all other cities. Therefore for Budget, Traffic Fines Share and Fine Cost manually defined thresholds were applied that flatten this anomaly and restore the distinguishability of results in the middle of the field.

For metrics with the direction lower = better, the result is finally reversed (100 − result), so that a high number of points always means a better assessment.