Have you struggled to find parking in town during peak season? But wasn’t the Transit Centre built to cope with this extra demand? Yes it was, but the spaces are effectively being used for other purposes.
Parking waivers are requests from developers to council that allow them to reduce – or eliminate –the number of car park spaces they need to build by using public spaces to meet their obligations. Waivers are a good thing for developers, as providing fewer spaces reduces building costs and increases profits.
But this is a bad thing for the community, as it reduces the number of parking spaces for visitors, shoppers and users of community facilities. Waivers have been approved overman years and while there is no way to track the cumulative effect of this, complaints about parking during high season suggest this is becoming problematic and that actionist required.
The Transit Centre provides 123all-day spaces to allow visitors to park and visit the beach, lunch and shop at leisure. It’s easy to see how parking can become limited when a proposed hotel/residential development in Thompson Avenue seeks a waiver for 40 places, a real estate agent seeks 13, and the new Cultural Centre will require 46 additional spaces than it had previously.
The new Community Hospital will probably need some of these spaces when it is built, but that is building that will provide great benefit to the community and Island Voice believes that it is appropriate to use spaces for this purpose. Also the Covid testing station is temporarily located there, and while we welcome its presence, it reduces parking capacity significantly.
There is also the annual issue of a lack of visitor spaces at various caravan parks, which have inadequate onsite parking for clients or visitors, yet benefit at the expense of their neighbours who experience great inconvenience.
When will this improve? Increases in housing density mean more cars in residential streets. Waiving car parking requirements in residential areas causes problems for neighbours, town congestion, loss of relaxed seaside character and may limit emergency access, putting lives and property at risk. Island Voice believes that waiving parking requirements must stop.
The council has recently indicated it intends to install smart parking to aid people if ending vacant spots. The system will provide electronic information about parking behaviour and assist traffic inspectors to enforce time restrictions for vehicles that over-stay.
This system will cost about $300-$400.000 (plus annual maintenance fees).Surely, if the issue is that people don’t know where to find free, all-day parking at the Transit Centre then it would cost far less to signpost it properly? Bass Coast Shire has stated smart parking will not mean paid parking. However in their Long Term Financial Plan, parking is identified as a potential income stream worth several million dollars.
What is the true situation here? Will electronic notifications of limited numbers of parking spots in prime locations see drivers compete to secure one? And what happens if they are beaten to it? Potential benefits of the system will only be realised during peak visitor periods (about five weeks per year), so we have to ask: how will this system benefit the community during the rest of the year? Will these measures remain in place all year, affecting residents out of season, when there is no shortage of parking, or will the system be turned off? How can this system pay for itself when the demand for parking is so seasonal?
We have been telling people to “relax you’re on Island time” for many years. So it seems strange we intend to give visitors a different message with the use of big city solutions in our seaside town. Instead of “sea, sand and fun” perhaps we will become “sea, sand and fine”. Island Voice calls for council to refuse parking waivers, except in thecae of buildings that provide great community benefit and also rethink the implementation of smart parking.
If you feel strongly about any of these issues, please let your councillors and CEO know and remember to raise it when the public engagement on planning takes place this year.
