John Williamson: Parking strategy or war on cars

Car parking land is valuable and a good turnover of car parks is smart. Photo / Michael Cunningham

OPINION

New Zealand has one of the highest car ownership rates in the world. Currently, around 92 per cent of our households have at least one car and we own 818 cars per 1000 population. We expect to use these cars for work, sport and pleasure, drive on decent roads and be able to park close to where we want to go.

We have a real attachment to our cars and owning our first car is a rite of passage. Our car defines our personality as well as creating a sense of security and pride. Now, local authorities around the world are attacking these perceptions, in respect to how best to accommodate our vehicles against rising competing pressures.

Last week Whangārei District Council’s latest draft parking strategy emerged. It’s to be considered alongside the National Policy Statement for Urban Design (NPS-UD), the global issues of emissions and climate change, and the drive for a modal shift towards walking, cycling and public transport.

The strategy acknowledges that land occupying car parks is expensive and not particularly beautiful, but that the extensive development around the town basin requires that visitors want to be able to park there long enough to enjoy it all.

I’ve been around long enough to remember a proposal for a multi-storied car park at Forum North, but that parking requirement was solved by demolishing both a service station in Water St and multiple commercial buildings in Vine St. Providing more car parks in the city centre though is not part of this strategy.

The 2020 NPS-UD, requires local authorities to remove from their District Plan, any parking requirement to support any use or development of a property.

This same policy statement required certain district plans to be able to intensify their land use, to allow up to 11 metres height in medium-density residential zones, with increased permitted living spaces, reduced setbacks, increased site coverage and no required car parks. It is this type of intensification that Kāinga Ora is proposing across a number of Whangārei residential suburbs. So where will all the cars go? On to the street-of course!

When you combine these increased street cars, with taking of parking spaces for walking and cycling’s shared pathways, and the proposal to establish dedicated bus lanes, then the spaces for parking the one car that every one of us owns, are significantly under threat. Some local authorities are saying that you no longer have the right to park your car on the street outside the house that you own - the war on cars.

The Whangārei District Council’s draft strategy is not as draconian as that though.

It recognises that available public car parks will reduce as the population increases, and due to competing pressures.

The proposal is an evolution of the 2011 version which uses zones, parking times and different charging rates within these zones, to manage parking in the city.

There is a recognition within the strategy that about half of Whangārei’s central city car parking is overloaded during the week, but that further away cheaper longer term parking, is underused. There is no particular mention of the use of technology to better manage the parking spaces available- and therein lies an opportunity.

If we acknowledge that car parking land is valuable and that good turnover of car parks is smart, that having car parking wardens randomly looking for over-parked cars is pretty inefficient, and that drivers cruising looking for a car park is wasteful, causing congestion and pollution, then it seems to me, that WDC should be factoring more technology to solve that, into its strategy.

Palmerston North City has a system called Frogparking. This is a locally developed and internationally acclaimed hardware and software technology system that: Tells a driver where there is a vacant car park, allows them to pay for it, lets the system know when a car park is vacated, tells the system when a car is overtime, and collects all the parking and fine revenue from users.

The car parking question will become more vexed as our love of cars continues. Legislation removing the need for on site parking will create more street parking, and the pressure for higher use of our most valuable land asset is intensifying. The draft parking strategy is now out for consultation.