Parking meters to extend grip over city

Auckland City Council plans to expand the $4 per hour on-street parking area in the central city and start charging $2 an hour to park in the Domain on weekdays.

The charges will rake in $1.4 million a year at a time when senior staff are crying out for new revenue sources to balance their budgets. Councillors are expected to approve the charges next week for introduction from July.

Once approved, the $4 per hour on-street parking area will be expanded from the central city towards the university and include Symonds St, Upper Queen St and part of Karangahape Rd. The current charge in this area is $3 an hour.

The council will also begin installing 200 pay and display parking meters in the Domain within a 500m radius of Auckland Hospital covering about 1200 carparks with a weekday charge of $2 per hour. It will take about two years to install the meters.

In a report, council parking staff said that with the centralisation of medical services at Auckland Hospital more people were parking in the Domain and flouting free parking for up to three hours. The size of the Domain made enforcement difficult for parking wardens.

"This behaviour is preventing others wishing to use or visit the Auckland Domain from accessing parking," the report said.

Council staff have rejected the option of reducing maximum parking times in central Auckland to address the problem of finding a park because it would "not meet the need" of motorists.

"It is therefore necessary to increase pay and display tariffs to achieve the required turnover-occupancy balance," said the report approved by traffic and roading group manager Joseph Flanagan and customer services director Paul Sonderer.

Mr Flanagan and Mr Sonderer were unavailable yesterday but transport committee chairman Richard Simpson denied the charges were a revenue-gathering exercise.

Mr Simpson preferred to think of the charges as a "travel demand management" measure of encouraging people to think twice about bringing cars into the city.

"It's the stick obviously and the carrot of getting [public] transportation more acceptable to people," Mr Simpson said.

Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney said parking charges were a reason shoppers stayed away from the city and drove their cars to suburban malls with free parking.

Mr Swney said that while Auckland did not have anything close to a modern transport system, parking charges were a blunt instrument that discriminated against city businesses.