There was a great interview of parking expert Julie Anne Genter on National Radio this morning. You can listen to the interview here. While I’m generally quite aware of what Julie talks about, two things particular stood out for me in the interview:
- That for most non-residential uses in Auckland outside the CBD, the parking requirements will generally require a greater amount of land be dedicated to parking than the actual land-use itself. This effectively means that each activity is mandated to require twice as much space as it actually needs – because it is required to provide parking. The economic impacts of that, I imagine, would be quite incredible.
- That one of the most common resource consents applied for, at least in the Porirua case study mentioned in the interview (and there’s no real reason to think it would be any different elsewhere in NZ) is to get a dispensation for not meeting the minimum parking requirements. With so much focus going on “streamlining” the Resource Management Act and making it easier for people to do what they want to do, while not sacrificing environmental outcomes, it seems as though doing something about parking requirements is a total no-brainer.
Julie has been in a great Youtubte video on parking, which I have posted before but it’s probably worth reposting to give people a bit more background information.
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Nick Legget the mayor has plans to revitalise the Porirua CBD. Plans to increase office use and retail. But it will require better transport links and less carparks. Like any place, its socially acceptable to own a car while those who use the bus are the poor people. But like what Jan Jolie the Green candadate for Mana said, its $7 return for a bus to Titahi Bay, which is only a short distance to Porirua city. Hardly feasable!
Our public transport system has a long way to go and the PTMA will go along way to helping fix this.
Porirua city center has found its niche in the “big box” retail space. Along with an indoor shopping mall that surprised me how clean and new it was, since I’d pretty much assumed everything in Porirua would be old, tagged, and full of gang members. There are vast car parks around all of the warehouse-sized shops. I think it is going to be hard persuading people to shop for a giant plasma TV or a couch using public transport. The area could do with some intensification, and maybe central government could help that along by shifting a couple of departments there from central Wellington. But they’re doing pretty well with the niche they’ve found themselves.
Explanation… I wouldn’t even think of visiting Porirua, but I was doing some work at the Police College last year.
Porirua is actually an affluent city having one of the highest average incomes in the country, though there is also a high variance in wealth. But it’s not a bad place and could do much better than being dominated by carparks and the like.
For something like a couch, that’s not going to fit in most peoples vehicles anyway. If you were shopping for a couch, you’d probably go check them out, put a deposit on one you like then organise delivery with the shop or go call uncle Gary with the big trailer to give you a hand. There is nothing to stop people doing that by public transport.
“I think it is going to be hard persuading people to shop for a giant plasma TV or a couch using public transport”
Wrong primary target market for PT, in my opinion – how many of all trips are retail trips? 1 in 10? 1 in 8 at most? There’s lots of other trips where the “carrying baggage” issue does not apply. Once PT gets good enough, some people will start using it for retail, but I know that even the Dutch and Germans shop a lot with cars.
How many people take the giant plasma screen home in their car rather than getting it delivered anyway? Can giant plasma TVs even fit in the back of a regular car?
You haven’t seen the cars my bosses drive – some of them could fit a whole IMAX 😉
I guess the other issue is how often you go to a shopping centre and buy something that size. Supermarket shopping is probably the most regular one that would “need” car transportation – but really most other big items you probably only purchase every 6 months or so. At other times you might be buying some clothes or a few books or other stuff that could easily be transported home on PT.
I think the main reason people don’t use public transport to go shopping is because service frequencies are rubbish on weekends.
However, many of those “non-big” shopping trips are secondary trips anyway, i.e. you are already in the city or wherever you are for another reason. So in my view that again shows that one needs to concentrate on work and school, and to a degree, leisure trips, rather than retail trips – at least to get the biggest bang for your buck.
I think you need to focus both on where there is a problem, and where PT might have a decent chance at making a difference to that problem.
Overseas PT gets excellent modeshare of trips to shopping malls – even in car dependent places like Australia. The difference is that they locate many of their shopping malls, like Westfield Bondi Junction and Westfield Parramatta, basically on top of railway stations. So it certainly is possible.
The argument for improving PT to shopping centres like St Lukes is based along the lines that the roading is pretty much at capacity at the moment. And I’m sorry but I struggle to believe that the mall could be doubled in size and traffic still be OK with just a few minor roading improvements. On weekends St Lukes Road is extremely busy all the way between the mall and the Northwest Motorway. Adding to that traffic will cause huge problems around the St Lukes interchange for example. So really, the options are:
1) Don’t expand the size of St Lukes (or don’t expand its parking, both will have similar effects if we manage on-street parking carefully).
2) Undertake enormously expensive upgrades to roads where doubling the mall’s size will have an impact. This would include the St Lukes interchange and probably a few other extremely expensive upgrades if done properly.
3) Somehow make public transport an attractive option so that the number of vehicles travelling to and from the mall stays about what it is now. This will probably involve restricting the parking.
I sell TV’s for a living. The 50″ tvs that we sell won’t fit in most cars. It’s not safe to transport them lying down, you need to transport them upright (the amount of tvs that we have that people break by transporting incorrectly…).
Most cars won’t transport a 50″ plasma tv in a box upright, it simply won’t fit into the boot or backseat. You need at least a van or a ute. We offer a delivery option of $60 anywhere in Christchurch, however most people do prefer to try and cram them in their car. I’ve put my back out and had chronic back pain for 2 weeks from helping a customer fit a 50″ in his 2door car.
The alternative to $60 delivery is simply getting a taxi van, if you don’t have your own car. Considering that buying a TV is usually a one in 5yr purchase, it’s not like delivery fees build up too much.
I think I need to check some of my project plans and check whether that “parking area vs activity area” argument pans out. Initially I though “rubbish!” but then I realised I had forgotten access and circulation aisle space. Ooops. Lotsa sealed area there…
One look at Porirua’s MegaCentre on Google Earth makes for pretty dismal viewing. Reminds me of a post on here a while back about large swaths of sealed area being used for just parking.
That said, if the public transport is expensive (I reeled when I saw the $7 figure for between Titahi Bay and Pori!), why not use your car?
We need an objective study that looks at exactly what parking costs in increased rates, goods and services costs, increased house prices and reduced salaries… And what level we would need to charge parking at to achieve neutrality and effect of removing minimum parking requirements…