On my trip to Georgia, street parking was free in the first two cities I visited, Kutaisi and Batumi. Tbilisi, the third city we visited was another story. And of course, it wasn’t a simple one.
Tbilisi used to have free street parking, but because of congestion issues they have instituted parking zones- the more close you are to the city center (and the tourist attractions) the more it costs per hour. Zone 1 is 1 GEL per hour, 2 is 2 per hour, and 3 is 3 GEL per hour.
When I arrived at my Airbnb in Tbilisi, I was in a bit of a rush, but I couldn’t figure out how to legally park. I couldn’t find a paid parking lot near where I was staying, but paid street parking? It seemed to be almost as complicated as what happened in Sofia, Bulgaria, when my car ended up with a boot on the wheel, though in Tbilisi, it seems your car will be towed if not paid.
When I attempted to ask locals how to pay the 1 GEL per hour (at least the sign made that clear) the people nearby were not very helpful. And it wasn’t just a language issue, but that complicated the situation.
They told me to download the Tbilisi parking app and pay with that, but to sign up for it I needed to include my travel document number and it didn’t accept my passport, so I wasn’t able to use that.
Google was telling me that I could use these pay boxes to pay for parking, that they supposedly can be found on every block, but I didn’t see one near where I was parking. To pay using them, you need a wallet number, and I got mixed information about where to get this wallet number, some places saying you just need your license plate number and others saying that you need to register to get a number at specific kiosks. But either way, it was a moot point for me because I couldn’t even find one of these pay boxes.
The other way I found out that you could pay was using this website in English, but it didn’t work for me. It required my personal number or company identification code with one of the options, but again it didn’t accept my passport number and I didn’t have the company identification code, and in the other place it wanted me to put in my car license plate and it would look it up, but then I kept getting error messages.
I was getting very stressed out, because by this point I was pressed for time, and I didn’t want to get my car towed or a ticket or something else because of not paying for parking.
Finally I found a way that worked, that you didn’t need to be registered anywhere, it didn’t need your personal ID, you didn’t need to download anything.
You just went to the Tbilisi parking section on the municipal website and get a page that looks like this.
Don’t worry if you don’t speak Georgian, since neither do I.
You just plug it into Google Translate, and you end up with this, where you can select the language you want it translated into, and then use the site as you would otherwise. Here’s a link that should take you to the translated website.
If that doesn’t work for you, just go to the part of Google Translate that translates websites, and copy the link for the parking page there.
From there, it is very simple.
Just put in the license plate number. Put in how long you want to park for. Put in the parking zone, which is the code on the pole near where you parked, starting with A, B, or C followed by 4 numbers.
It’ll tell you the fee, and then you press pay, and then it brings you to the credit card payment page.
It might not let you do this through the Google Translate page, in which case have that open to see what each thing means, but then fill out the information on the original Georgian page.
And voila, your parking fees are paid.
It shouldn’t need to be this complicated, but for whatever reason it is.
I hope that if you visit Georgia and need to figure out how to park, my instructions will be helpful to you. (And I made this a separate post so that way, hopefully, if someone is searching the internet for parking tips in Tbilisi for a non citizen or a tourist, they can use this post to help them out.)
What is the most complicated parking situation you’ve had when traveling? I still think Sofia, Bulgaria, is the most messed up.
