Kate Hawkesby: Is carparking such a rip-off to make us all use public transport?

COMMENT: Something's going on with carparking at the moment, and I'm not into it.

It is becoming more and more impossible to find a park, more expensive to pay for it when you do find one - and there seems to be a plethora of people these days lining up to ticket you when you do park.

In my area, there's also been a ban on SUVs parking at the local supermarket carpark.

It's like we're being forced out of our cars - and into what? The bus?
Which if you're in Wellington you can never get because they don't turn up, or they take the wrong route.

The train? Yep, I guess, if it ran to time and actually stopped anywhere near where you need to be.

Maybe a bike? Bit tricky when you're carrying groceries or it's raining cats and dogs or you have to take the kids to after-school sport. So how is it we are supposed to get around?

Compounding our inability to park is the price of petrol of course. So we're being turfed out of our cars, in what's clearly a bid to push us onto public transport.

In Auckland, the largest survey yet of public transport users showed the thing they want the most is more frequent services.

Ten thousand passengers were quizzed on their experiences, and guess what?
Guess what the number one most cited reason for using public transport was?

That they couldn't get a park. The difficulty of finding a park was why people were catching the bus.

Not because they like the ambiance. Because they've literally been forced out of their car due to a lack of parking.

So the council, who run a crap service of useless contractors supposed to buzz us around the place on the late and unreliable buses, have worked out that first they need to make sure we're all out of our cars, so they penalise us.

Car parks on the street have been eradicated in favour of yellow lines, cycle lanes and bus lanes - actual carpark spaces have had the prices hiked up so severely no one can afford to stop there.

And don't even get me started on Wilson Parking: they're just one of the private operators who dominate the city's carparking buildings and are such rip-off merchants that they'll charge you an arm and a leg to park so you don't even bother.

My point is if you want to force us all onto buses, that's fine, but you better make sure there are some, that they run to time, and in the right direction.

Otherwise, can we have some parks back please?