How can we ensure a park is usually available?
We all want to get around Yarra safely, so we can visit friends, the library, shops or services. Some people need to drive, and these people should be able to find a park near their destination. The problem is that many of Yarra’s parking bays are occupied all day because they’re offered for free.
Yarra policy
Yarra’s Parking Management Strategy, the Climate Emergency Plan, and the Transport Strategy all state that all visitors should pay for parking; the reality is that this doesn’t happen.
Require visitors to the City of Yarra to contribute to the cost of providing and maintaining the parking infrastructure they use by paying for parking
Parking Management Strategy
Develop a Parking Management Plan…apply user-pays principles and remove incentives that preference car use and ownership…Develop a model for Council’s parking revenue that’s financially and environmentally sustainable.
Action 4.3 from Climate Emergency Plan
Car parking revenue and a user-pays model provides essential funding on a consistent basis that provides alternatives to car travel for everyone…parking management approaches that actively discourage non-essential car ownership and car travel, while also continuing to provide convenient parking for those who need it…Parking management approaches should not encourage people to shuttle a car between different parking spaces in the same area all day.
Transport Strategy
Sell digital tickets
Yarra can ensure that most (if not all) visitors pay for parking by changing from unpaid to paid parking, using digital tickets sold via smartphone apps, with tickets linked to the vehicle’s number plate.
How it would work
In the simplest implementation, both sides of each street would change to ‘Ticket Zone’, similar to the Council car park at Burnley Golf Course. Existing resident or business permits would remain valid for the new ‘Ticket Zone’ (just as they were for the previous 1P, 2P, or 4P zones). Shoppers would need to purchase a digital ticket, which could even be free for the first two hours (just like a 2P zone) before transitioning to paid. To prevent commuters from occupying all the bays in a specific area, different zones can be defined, e.g. for a street or a neighbourhood, with limits on the number of tickets sold in each zone, and pricing set in each zone so that the daily tickets only just sell out each day. For example, limiting the sales of daily tickets to ⅓ of the bays in a residential street, or ⅔ in a commercial street, would keep some space free for short-term parking.
Resident visitor permits
If a resident has a visitor who needs to stay for longer than two hours, and doesn’t want them to have to pay, then they use a digital visitor permit, similar to the digital permits offered at the cities of Bayside, Brimbank, Glen Eira, Kingston, Merri-bek, Port Phillip, Stonnington, or Whitehorse, linked to the visitor’s number plate.
To prevent households from selling their visitor permits to commuters, the fee would gradually escalate, before resetting at the end of the calendar year, e.g.:
- The first 10 daily permits purchased within a calendar year are free
- The next 10 daily permits are $2 each
- The next 10 daily permits are $4 each, etc, escalating upwards to the ceiling price for that zone
- Reset back to free on 1st January
Enforcement
A key benefit of changing to digital permits is that enforcement will be much easier.
At present, many time-restricted parking bays are enforced using in-ground sensors, which send an alert to parking officers if a vehicle has stayed longer that the time limit. The problem is that commuters have learnt that they can put a timer on their smartphone and then re-set the sensor by driving out, waiting briefly, and reversing back in again. Many other parking bays don’t have in-ground sensors, so enforcement officers are forced to use the highly time-consuming process of applying a chalk mark to a tyre, and then coming back after two hours, to see if the chalk marks are still there. Unfortunately, shuttling cars between parking bays defeats this method.
With digital tickets, there is a link between the ticket and the parking zone, so drivers can’t repeatedly apply for free two-hour tickets. Instead, they have to purchase a daily ticket, or leave the zone.
Enforcement is conducted using smartphones installed with an app for number plate recognition. Enforcement officers can simply scan a number plate to determine whether the vehicle has a valid ticket or not. Even better, cameras can be fitted to vehicles so that number plates can be automatically scanned as enforcement officers drive along a street. In this manner, fewer officers can check more streets more often.
If parking is full
Streets in residential zones often fill up when people return home from work – if this happens then the demand from residents needs to be managed. Options include:
- reduce the number of permits a household is eligible for, by one, if a property has a crossover (which reduces the available parking on the street)
- increase the price of the 2nd and 3rd permits (the 1st permit remains at a low price)
If Yarra introduces a city-wide reform, e.g. ‘you lose a permit if you have a crossover’, but some households still need their previous number of permits, then Council can offer them a new type of resident permit that has a lower subsidy, i.e. a higher price. That way, residents can still park, but they are asked to contribute more.
Council identified that parking permits would become more valuable with time, back in 2003 when council blocked subdivisions from being eligible for on-street parking permits.
At present, a first residential permit in Yarra costs just over $50, much lower than in other high-demand neighbourhoods in cities such as Miami Beach, Vancouver, Portland or Amsterdam, which range from AU$351 to AU$884:
Summary
We can reform how we manage parking so that:
- visitors can find a park near shops, and avoid a fine
- commuters (who park all-day) contribute to the cost of maintaining our streets
- residents can find a park when they get home from work
- parking enforcement is more effective, and the same staff can cover a wider area
by implementing the following:
- converting on-street parking from unpaid (unrestricted or time restricted) to paid (Ticket Zone)
- selling digital tickets via smartphone apps
- limiting the number of daily tickets sold in each zone
Guidance from experts
Guidance from the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, via their free guide to the pricing of on-street parking, aligns with our proposals for reform:
Guidance from Austroads
Guidance from Austroads also aligns with our proposals for reform:
Drivers cannot expect long-term free parking close to their destination.
There are environmental aesthetic and financial costs associated with unlimited supply of parking.
The user pay principle is fair and applies to most services and products as well as to every other cost associated with owning and using a motor vehicle.
Pay parking increases equity by charging users (user pay) for their parking costs and by reducing the parking costs imposed on non-drivers. Paying directly rather than indirectly benefits consumers because it reduces parking and traffic problems and allows individuals to decide how much parking to purchase giving them an opportunity to save money. Drivers may use a space as long as they want, as long as they are prepared to pay for it.
Austroads Guide to Traffic Management Part 11 Parking
Local champion
Your local champion for parking is David Balding – Yarra resident. View all of Streets Alive Yarra’s champions on our supporters page.
Parking is a big issue for green and lively streets and a vital public realm. Our instincts to want more of it and cheaper lead to bad outcomes – the big subsidy has a distorting effect on undermining public transport, discouraging walking and cycling because of traffic congestion, more toxic pollution and less space available for greenery and public social spaces. This is one area where we need a big dose of the free market: councils should not be trying to put private parking providers out of business, or undermining the business model of car sharing and taxi providers by taking away customers through under-price parking. Fair-price parking is good for those who need parking because it will nudge many to try alternatives such as car sharing, creating more spaces for those who really need them. There is an equity issue as well: the current free/cheap parking on Yarra streets represents a huge subsidy to about half the residents, with many of those missing out on this hand-out being among the least well off. Rates are too high because council fails to price parking fairly. If you want vibrant Yarra streets with flourishing businesses and a fairer society, help us campaign for a fair price for parking in the public realm.
David Balding