During the 14 October 2025 Council Meeting we heard that the upcoming Parking and Kerbside Management Strategy would be presented at a Councillor Workshop in early November, together with timelines for community engagement.
The upcoming Parking and Kerbside Management Strategy is of keen interest to Streets Alive Yarra because:
- with our increasing number of office developments, we simply don’t have enough space for commuters to park their cars
- we let tens of thousands of non-resident commuters park all-day for free, in breach of our 2-hour and 4-hour time restrictions, because the restrictions are too difficult to enforce across the whole municipality with our limited number of parking officers
The issue of commuter parking has long been discussed in cities—here’s a video from 1969 in Dublin. You can hear contrasting views:
- our streets are congested during peak hour, it’s too difficult to find a car park, and we should build more multi-storey off-street car parks
- we should add parking meters, and restrict access for cars to our inner city
The good news is that parking problems can be solved, as long as we can agree on what is most important. If we wish to protect resident parking from encroachment by all-day non-resident commuters (as opposed to shoppers who only stay for a couple of hours), then we can do the following:
- For each street segment that we wish to protect, we define it as a discrete parking zone, comprising all the parking on both sides of the street
- Residential and visitor permits can be used anywhere in that zone, i.e. on both sides of the street
- Count the total number of car parking bays in the zone, and in collaboration with locals, decide what portion are to be made available to commuters or shoppers, via digital parking tickets, at what times of the day
- for example, up to half can be used between 7 am and 7 pm, when residents are away at work, but none after 7 pm, when residents are returning from work
- Council’s parking app offers parking tickets to visitors, that are linked to each vehicle’s number plate; when they are sold out, no more tickets are available, and the visitor needs to look in a different parking zone
- 2-hour tickets can be offered for free, to support shoppers and local traders
- All-day parking requires payment, such as $11, the same as an all-day public transport ticket (Myki)
- Council officers can quickly and easily enforce the restrictions by scanning each number plate—a vehicle either has a permit or it doesn’t
- The same number of parking officers can cover a much larger area each day
Overall, we can protect residents from commuters if we decide to use digital parking tickets to simplify how we enforce parking restrictions.
Published 17 October 2025