How can we raise $10 million per year for our streets?
Streets Alive Yarra is calling on the City of Yarra to allocate $10 million per year for capital expenditure on our streets. However, council is reported to be $50 million in deficit as an outcome from COVID, so where can this money come from?
Sell daily permits to commuters
Roughly 3/4 of Yarra’s parking bays (34,000 out of 47,000) are offered for free, including to commuters.
This compares with off-street parking costing commuters up to $27 per day.
Council could ask commuters to pay a small fee to park each day in Yarra, e.g. $5 in low demand areas, increasing to $20 per day in high demand areas. Council can do this by changing free parking bays to permit zones and then selling digital permits via a smartphone app. For example, if 20,000 bays raised money for 250 days each year, then:
- At an average of $5/day, council could raise $25 million per year
- At an average of $10/day, council could raise $50 million per year
Sell annual permits to commuters
If council preferred to sell the existing ‘sticker’ type of permits to commuters, which are fixed to the windscreen, instead of digital permits, they can do so. Such permits could be valid for a particular street or neighbourhood, e.g. Cremorne. If Yarra sold 10,000 permits across the municipality, for $3,000 each, we could raise $30 million per year. Note that the City of Moreland already do something very similar, via their ‘Moreland User Pays permit‘, costing $100 for the first month and $300 for subsequent months, or $3,400 per year. Similarly, council could sell ‘anywhere in Yarra’ permit stickers. If Yarra sold 1,000 permits for $6,000 each, we could raise $6 million per year.
Increase the fee for residential & business parking permits
Yarra sells approximately 30,000 parking residential & business parking permits each year. The price for a first permit is $50 per year (14 cents per day). If the price was increased to $365 per year ($1 per day) then Yarra would raise an extra $9 million per year. This price would be comparable to the City of Vancouver, which charges $401 Canadian dollars per year (AU$422), for residential on-street parking permits in the high demand West End area. Note that such a change would not impact the households who receive a free parking permit, based on approved concessions. Clearly, this option would not be necessary if council was raising $50 million per year from commuters.
These ideas aren’t new
Increasing the price of parking to provide revenue for safe travel infrastructure isn’t a new idea. Here’s a local resident suggesting it in 2016:
Conclusion
Reforms to the pricing of on-street parking can easily raise $50 million each year, enabling $10 million to be spent on infrastructure for walking and biking, with the remainder going to other services, capital expenditure, or cuts to rates.