Council plans to endorse a draft Kerbside and Parking Management strategy for community engagement in early 2027. Many people agree that we want:
- residents to be able to find a park when they get home
- customers to be able to find a park near shops and services
- commuters to be able to find a park near their work (if they’re willing to pay a reasonable fee)
All of the above can be achieved if we cover Yarra with metered parking that provides exceptions for vehicles with residential, visitor, or business parking permits.
Yarra’s parking “before and after” if we covered Yarra with metered parking. Image credits: Streets Alive Yarra.
How it would work
Council would replace all unrestricted, 1P, 2P, 4P, and Permit zones with Metered parking, and add a parking meter pedestal to each street.
Vehicles with residential, visitor, or business parking permits could park in any metered bay (without paying the meter) located within a short walking distance of their home (except for the metered parking spots on our really busy shopping streets).
Customers could park in any metered bay near the shop of service they are visiting, get the first two hours free (like an existing 2P zone) and then pay by the hour if they need to stay longer. Similarly, commuters could park in any metered parking bay near their work, and purchase an “all-day” ticket for a reasonable fee, e.g. equivalent to a Myki public transport daily fare of $11.40.
To keep enough parking bays available for residents, the system would limit the number of “2P free, then pay by the hour” and “all-day” tickets sold each day. The thresholds could be set independently for each street, to reflect local conditions. For example, a starting point could be that a maximum of 1/3 of the bays in a street could be occupied by commuters, and another 1/3 by visitors, leaving 1/3 for residents. More commercially oriented streets can have different limits than residential streets.
If a driver arrived at a street and all the “2P free, then pay by the hour” or “all-day” tickets were sold out, then they’d have to look in another street or risk a fine (just like now).
Why it would work better than now
The main problem with existing parking restrictions is the difficulty to enforce all the streets in Yarra each day. Existing methods of enforcing 2P or 4P zones are ineffective because drivers can simply set a timer on their phone, drive out to re-set the underground sensor, and then park again.
It’s even worse for streets that don’t have an underground sensor for each parking bay, for those streets enforcement officers have to place a chalk mark on a tyre and then check back in a few hours, which is really time consuming.
With parking meters it’s much simpler and faster because each parking ticket is linked to a vehicle’s number plate. Parking enforcement offers simply scan the vehicle’s number plate and the parking system knows if they have a valid ticket or not. Each officer can cover many more streets in their shift.
That means the system can work effectively to protect residents from commuters, while still allowing customers to access shops.
New rule required
At the moment, metered parking is only located on busy shopping streets and vehicles with residential permits don’t get an exception. That rule would have to change.
Conclusion
It is possible to protect residents from commuters, while still allowing customers to access local shops, if we’re happy to reform how we manage on-street parking.