Auckland Transport does u-turn, says two dozen fines issued in 2am blitz will be waived

Cars negotiate Tautari St in Orakei, where residents were ticketed after parking vehicles partly on the road and footpath so other road users could travel safely along the street. Photo / Greg Bowker

Auckland Transport has done a U-turn on more than two dozen fines issued in a 2am parking blitz.

The $40 fines were issued to 27 vehicles on Tautari and Apihai streets in Orakei last month for parking with two wheels on the kerb.

Residents, local politicians and the national Automobile Association slammed the move, saying it "lacked common sense" and was "revenue gathering".

They said if the vehicles parked correctly, access would be obscured for emergency services vehicles on the narrow street.

A parking ticket issued at 2.05am. Photo / Supplied

Footpaths were also very wide on the streets, more than 3m in parts, and the kerb-parking did not block access to them.

Just days after the ticketing blitz, an Auckland Council car was photographed parked in the same manner on Tautari St and was not fined - causing even more outrage.

An Auckland Transport spokesman said the agency "will be waiving these infringement notices and treating them as warnings".

"We will be working with local boards around how we deal with the issue of parking in narrow streets," he said.

"We will be looking at when it is appropriate to issue warnings rather than infringement notices."

An Auckland Council car parked well over a footpath. Photo / Supplied

A public meeting was also being planned for the Orakei area to talk about parking options for those living in narrow streets.

Tautari St resident Jamie Wilson said he was happy to escape the fine, but it did not solve the other issues at hand.

"There was no reason for these to be given in the first place. The council is failing to admit that they are in the wrong, waiving them doesn't solve the issue that we were parking our cars there for safety reasons in the first place."

The Auckland Ratepayers' Alliance was one of the groups that slammed the fines, and has welcomes the decision to waive the fines.

Spokeswoman Jo Holmes said Auckland Transport was "finally applying some common sense".

"Our members were particularly disturbed by the council's apparent duplicity in refusing to ticket council employees for breaking the same rules. Though it's a small victory, it's good to see people power can force Auckland Transport's hand."

A petition started by the alliance condemning the ticketing blitz gained more than 2000 signatures.