Estimate parking costs for a trip.
Car park tariffs are deliberately front-loaded: a high first hour discourages short-stay drivers from occupying long-stay space, then each additional hour is cheaper, and a daily maximum caps the total. Two consequences follow. First, part hours are almost always rounded up, so five and a quarter hours is charged as six. Second, the effective hourly rate falls steeply with duration — at these rates a one-hour stay costs 6 dollars an hour while a nine-hour stay costs 3.11, because the cap has taken over. If you are near the cap it is often cheaper to stay longer than to move the car, which is the opposite of the intuition most drivers apply.
Parking Cost
Chargeable hours = hours parked, rounded up; uncapped = first hour rate + (hours - 1) x subsequent rate; charge = min(uncapped, daily maximum)
It is a deliberate deterrent to short-stay drivers taking long-stay spaces, and it also captures the drivers least sensitive to price. Long-stay tariffs are subsidised by it.
Rarely. Once you are near the daily cap, staying is cheaper than starting a fresh session at the first-hour rate, and many car parks detect re-entry within a short window anyway.