[traceroute66]

> Taxi enters drop-off area for 30 seconds: £7

To be fair, I entirely understand the absolute necessity for this.

The reason for its introduction is before hand the PHVs (Uber etc.) of this world would, instead of using the car parks, go up to the drop-off area and wait there.

Because there was no charge and no penalty, what they would do is drop off a passenger and then sit there waiting for their next job to ping on their screen.

This became a particular problem at Heathrow T5 where the drop off area is relatively tiny.

The result would be that at busy hours, private individuals attempting to drop off their friends and family would be unable to find space and end-up double-parking and causing safety hazards.

For a while they tried to use airport Police to enforce it, but the volume of PHVs was just far too great. Hence the cameras, charges and penalties were introduced.

It should also be noted that at Heathrow, if you do not want to pay the £7, you can instead drop people off for free at the Long Term Car park and they can get the shuttle bus back to the terminal.

[pc86]

Rather than charge everyone £7 or more for a drop off, wouldn't it make more sense to charge the people abusing it an absurd amount? I'd much rather see a £25 fee after 90 seconds and an additional £125 fee after 5 minutes than £7 for 30 seconds.

It seems less about making things more efficient and more about just squeezing a little bit out of money out of everyone.

[Chris2048]

Recently parked in a Spanish airport carpark that worked similar to this.

First few minutes free, lower tariffs for 5-10 mins (or maybe fixed charge at those limits?), then like 1 euro per minute after that.

[cess11]

That'd be a lot of surveillance and bookkeeping.