The trial of one-hour free parking was a disaster, yet councillors voted for it to continue; how did that happen 😮 ? Also, Councillor Davies reported that the trial was a success; what data was he looking at 🧐 ?
Officer report
Officers reported that the trial of one-hour free parking didn’t work and should be ceased.
Shoppers are locals
Council asked an independent consultant to work out what was happening, they interviewed people on the street and found that most shoppers are locals, living nearby to that shopping street. This screenshot shows Bridge Road, the results are similar for the other streets.
Shoppers walk to shops
Most shoppers walk to their local shopping streets, which makes sense because we’ve learnt that most shoppers live close to their shopping street. Again, the screenshot shows Bridge Road, and the results are similar for the other streets.
The trial made no difference
The trial made no difference to existing trends to spending or vacancies.
Businesses aren’t really sure
Businesses were unsure (or unwilling to say) whether their revenue had increased or decreased, indicating that their support for free one hour parking was less about evidence and more about a vibe.
Lies, damned lies, and Councillor Davies
Officers were clear in their report; the trial didn’t deliver any benefit. Yet Councillor Davies posted that the trial was a success 😮. What numbers was he looking at 🧐 ?
One post, dated 6 September 2026, showed data for Swan Street and claimed that one hour free parking works. Unfortunately, Cr Davies confuses correlation with causation. Yes, revenue on Swan Street went up after the trial started, but that was happening anyway and the trial made no difference to the existing trend.
The real outcome is that council revenue (which flows back to residents via services and infrastructure) decreased significantly, without delivering any benefit to traders. Also, we note that Cr Davies only posted the result for Swan Street, if he’d published the data for Bridge Road, it would have shown a negative multiplier, i.e. the council subsidy resulted in a loss of revenue for traders.
Another post, dated 7 September 2026, claimed to show that more people travelled to the shopping streets, i.e. that visitation had increased.
However, the independent report stated: There is no data available on actual visitation rates for any of the activity centres, so where did he get the data from 🧐 ?
We can get some insight by listening to the recording of the council meeting. At timestamp 1:17:00, Cr Davies asked about visitation and referred to the chart on page 116 of the agenda documents.
We can see that Cr Davies counted the increase in parking events (the difference in length between the green and blue bars) and added them up. In the council meeting, officers explained that the chart was not visitation data:
While it does also show the number of ticket transactions made, it is not visitation data specifically. So that data does show that there have been more individual transactions made in the 25/26 financial year compared to the prior year. However, it does not demonstrate that this is due to the trial and and this is because we would expect to see transaction numbers increase for several reasons…For example, we would expect more drivers to be motivated to park on the trial streets because there’s free parking so they don’t choose to park on the side street…we would also expect to see more people undertake a transaction that would otherwise have risked not taking a ticket at all.
Officer response to Cr Davies
In summary, Cr Davies counted the number of parking meter transactions and conflated that to mean visitation. The two are quite different. As the officer explained in the meeting
- no increase in visitation occurs if a person parks on a shopping street (with a free one hour parking ticket) instead of parking on a side street (in a free 2P zone); the parking event is real but it doesn’t prove an increase in visitation
- no increase in visitation occurs if a person briefly parks on a shopping street (with a free one hour parking ticket) instead of briefly parking without a ticket (i.e. risking a fine); the parking event is real but it doesn’t prove an increase in visitation
To have evidence for an increase in visitation council would need to use sensors to count the number of people walking along a footpath, e.g. replicate the City of Melbourne’s Pedestrian Counting System:
Conclusion
The trial of one-hour free parking was a disaster, costing $1.7 million without delivering economic benefit to traders, yet councillors voted for it to continue. We urge councillors to:
- cease the trial of free one-hour parking and use the increased revenue to invest in improvements for walking, such as wider smoother footpaths, kerb outstands, and new wombat crossings
- change to demand responsive pricing, i.e. the lowest possible price (which can be free) that still allows shoppers to find a vacant parking bay (the price is just high enough to encourage turnover, so occupancy is below 85%)
- install pedestrian counting sensors at multiple locations along each of Yarra’s shopping streets, to provide real data to inform projects within each annual budget