Editorial: People not car parks will help CBD thrive

Earlier this week, we reported on a local senior who was outraged at having been given a $40 parking fine for not having a pay-and-display ticket in the central city.

The woman was in the park for 20 minutes while she made a quick pit stop at Rialto. I have no sympathy for her.

In the story, council explained it has a 10-minute grace period, so she'd have been given 10 minutes before having the ticket issued. Or if she'd had a ticket and it had run out, she'd be given 10 minutes grace after her ticket expired. All she needed to do was pop 20 cents in the meter, so she had a ticket, and she wouldn't have copped the fine. The charge for an expired ticket is much lower, starting at $12, instead of $40.

I spent most of my adult life living in Wellington, a city where parking charges are twice what they are here. And most Wellingtonians know it's better to chuck a little cash in the meter and have a ticket, than not have one at all. Why is it that the people of Tauranga feel entitled to free parking? No other city of our size would dream of it.

Of course the pro-free parking crowd took the chance to jump in on the action, like free parking is the silver bullet that's going to fix our CBD's woes. It won't.

Tauranga is at great risk of experiencing what Auckland did - where people have everything they need in their sprawling suburbs and no reason to go into the city. It's a problem that plagued Auckland for years, but has been turned around in the past few. So how did they do it? By taking car parks, such as Britomart and the City Works Depot, and turning them into pedestrian-friendly areas. Wellington did the same with its Golden Mile - a pedestrian-focused space in the CBD, to encourage people out of their cars and into the city's shops and cafes.

And yet our council wants to take on $5 million more debt to create yet more car parks? Getting more cars into the CBD won't help. Getting more people into the area will.

Tauranga needs to create areas in its central city for people to meander, meet friends, have coffee and, most importantly, spend money. Giving people the ability to park outside their destination for free, dash in for the one thing they came for and leave again is only going to make things worse. We need to make walking around our CBD the easier (and therefore preferred) choice, along with retailers, bars, cafes and businesses that support this vision.

I still find it mind-boggling that the CBD waterfront area is largely a car park. Our city is nestled against a picturesque harbour and yet we're not making the most of that appeal. Until people wake up and realise they're living in one of this country's biggest cities, and accept all that comes with that (paid parking included), Tauranga will never live up to its great potential.