Last week I looked at the costs of parking in parking buildings in the central city. Today I’m going to look at on street parking, in particular the impacts of the changes Auckland Transport made last year. If you don’t remember the changes then here is a quick recap.
Auckland Transport made some quite fundamental changes to how parking in the city centre is managed. The main changes were:
- Remove time limits for Pay & Display parking
- Introduce a graduated tariff structure in the central CBD – initially set at $4.00/hour for the first two hours, then $8.00/hour thereafter
- Implement a new 10 minute grace period
- Extend hours of paid parking until 10:00pm in central CBD
- Reduce off-street casual parking rates from $5.50/hour to $3.00/hour
- Reduce off-street casual daily maximum parking rate from $29.00 to $17.00
- Amend early bird entry time from 9.30am to 8.30am
Crucially AT managed to get the support of Heart of the City which advocates on behalf of the CBD retailers which was a significant achievement. A map of the changes is below.
At the last AT board meeting, one of sections in the business report covered off how the changes had been performing. The report said this about on street parking.
Notable changes in on-street daytime parking since CCPZ implementation have included:
- A decrease in the number of parking receipts by 8%, but an increase in parking revenue by 10%.
- A pleasing reduction in the number of infringements issued by 21%.
We understand that these changes in behaviour are likely the outcome of the removal of time restrictions. No time limits provide customers with choice to decide how long they want to stay, rather than being forced to obey restrictive time limits. Customers are therefore able to maximise their reason for visitation (e.g. business, shopping, dining out, or leisure).
See the table below which covers the period 1 January to 31 March 2013, compared to the same period in 2012:
So we have less people parking on the streets (a good thing) yet increased parking revenue (a good thing) and there were significantly less infringements being issued (a good thing). In other words so far the changes have been extremely successful when looked at just from on street parking alone. AT also note that there was a signification increase in the number of people using their parking buildings for casual parking and that the average time people stayed in them had also increased. Perhaps the only downside is that parking revenue from off street carparks declined $55,000 due to the price reduction. The reduction showed through quite clearly in the parking maps I made for the post last week with AT buildings being the cheapest places to park in the city for casual parking. Even with that price reduction taken into account, AT still saw a net increase in revenue from both on and off street parking of $129,000. In my view that is a very good result and shows that they are heading in the right direction so well done AT.
I had initially planned to write this post earlier and in the meantime the Herald has also looked at these results. The most interesting part I found was right at the end with the comments from Alex Swney
Heart of the City business organisation chief executive Alex Swney said he was pleased at the apparent success of the strategy for getting more motorists into parking buildings, and those choosing to stay on the streets could not complain about paying more for longer stays.
“If I want to stay for longer, I know I am going to have to pay for it.”
Mr Swney said the system would really come into its own in the next financial year, once Auckland Transport introduced $4.5 million of new technology parking meters to the streets, which would warn drivers with smart phones when they were about to face double fees so they could decide whether to move on or use their phones to pay more by remote control.
Linking in parking meters with smart phones sounds like an interesting idea. I am also aware that the new parking meters will allow people to pay for parking with their HOP card, something I think is superb.
Edit: I forgot to add in the changes have also been noticed by some of the other regions with both Tauranga and Hutt city councils looking at the implementation as they want to make similar changes.
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I am looking forward to being able to tag on and off my parking with a Hop Card so I don’t need to guess how long my stay is and either overpay or rush back madly to chuck more money in the meter.
Being able to tag on and off with the hop card would be a pretty great system and would really help in making a HOP card something that a large proportion of Aucklanders have.
I don’t think it would be tag on and tag off for on street parking otherwise a parking warden would have no way of knowing if you had tagged on? More likely is it will just be use your stored balance to pay for a set length of time. In parking buildings controlled by gates it could definitely be tag on and tag off though. I agree bbc, having HOP for parking would help put the card in more peoples hands which makes it easier for them should they decide to give PT a try.
How about you just pay for a set amount of time with stored balance, then get a refund if you come back early and tag off. Come back late and the parking warden will have given you a ticket.
I’d think the parking machine would be able to report that someone had tagged on but not tagged off. In New Plymouth and Levin, although they’re cash only, the machines require you to select a parking space before paying. If you punch the number of the parking space into the machine later, it’ll tell you whether someone’s paid and how much time is remaining. As a bonus, since the machine does the reporting, you don’t need to display a ticket on the dash. Just like an old-fashioned parking meter, where you can add more coins later if you want to extend your stay.
I really hope they’re designing the machines to allow tag on/tag off – it’s really irritating if you’re popping in somewhere and don’t know how long you’ll be. You wouldn’t want to forget to tag off in town though, at $8/hour!
Why not get the parking machine to print a “tagged-in” docket when you tag-in? You can then leave that on your dashboard for the warden to check.
Because the tagged-in docket won’t magically disappear when you tag off. The warden still needs to check the machine, to make sure you haven’t tagged on then tagged off, but left the docket on the windscreen. So might as well just have the machine be the one record (although it could print receipts as well if people want).
*windscreen = dashboard, since I know how pedantic people get around here.
you could solve that problem if you have assigned (numbered etc) parking bays; at which point the parking warden could just scan the number plate and the system would tell them if someone was paying for that “slot”
I’m thinking of something like this http://www.newplymouthnz.com/CouncilAtoZ/Parking/NewParkingMachines.htm which depends on having numbered spaces. You get a print-out receipt, but don’t have to display it. The machine itself (or the computer backend) stores the amount of time paid.
That still requires you to add time in advance, although with a mobile phone you can top it up later, remotely. A tag on/tag off system would let you pay for exactly the right amount of time, like you would in a parking building. Thinking about it though, I agree with Brendan – better to pay for the time up front, then get a refund for the extra. That way you can limit how much you spend if you forget to tag off.
You could have payment tied to a number plate, rather than to a “pay and display” thermal ticket. My understanding is that some cities overseas parking wardens use number plate recognition systems that check each number system with the central system, to confirm the car is paying for parking (or tagged on as somebody put above.)
The Herald of course chooses to make out that the changes were simply a revenue gather exercise.
I don’t understand why less people parking on our streets (legally) is a good thing. If the parking spaces are there than it’s better that they’re used than not used (I’m not talking about whether the spaces should be there).
Of course it may be that folks are parking for longer under the new system though I don’t know that.
You don’t want the spaces completely occupied, since then no-one who wants a park can get one, and there’s a lot of traffic from people circling for a space. Typically the ideal occupancy rate for parking spaces is no more than 85%.
That 85% number is from http://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/parking/RulesAboutParking/Documents/price-adjustment-policy-on-street-parking.pdf
It’s definitely a good thing- parking on streets in the CBD is not good use of space when there could be bus lanes, bike lanes, wider footpaths.
It could be… Buts its not. If it is allocated as a parking bays the space is of little use for other purposes.
I agree with frank. I think a greater number of people using street parking is a good thing. If the space is given over as parking bays anyway we might as well use it as productively as possible, and i believe the most productive, highest value use is typically short stays as it is easier to justify the the extra time spent parking in a building for longer stays. I also like that, For example, a TV broadcast van (to tall to fit in parking buildings) can legally park all day in the same spot if they are prepared to pay the high price. If we want to repurpose the space that is an entirely different issue.
I would be really careful about assuming a positive correlation between the number of parking receipt sales, the number of people parking, and parking space occupancy.
Compared to the old system, for example:
– people may be parking for longer. This could cause a decrease in number of receipts, decrease in number of people parking, and increase in parking space occupancy.
– people who would previously move their vehicle to another street and pay again to comply with the time limits previously in place may now just pay for a longer time. This would cause: decrease in number of receipts, no change to number of people parking, and no change in parking occupancy.
It would be great to have the occupancy percentages for areas/streets over different times of day, and days of the week, too see how much we are sitting in the 70% – 90% occupancy band I consider optimum. I think we would see most of the green zones shoot up to 95% – 98% occupancy after 6pm. – This leads to circling for parking and it encourages illegally stopping, footpath parking and other negative effects
No the reduction in on street parking is a good thing because it means we can continue to reduce the supply of this poor land use and replace it with higher value amenity such as Transit lanes, cycle lanes, and pedestrian space. Yay! The tin can be stored in the still vast oversupply of off street parks. A resource AK is rich in. And as the other movement systems and place qualities improve then these too can be repurposed for higher value use—> Better City.
Decouple the parking space provision (number of spaces) from the policy used to manage parking in the on street bays.
Set the parking policy up to maximise utility (Benifits) from every parking space.
As a completely separate task analyse each street to check that all the space is being used to the maximise value. If parking spaces would provide higher value if they (for example) were converted to wider footpaths, then by all means convert them.
But if the spaces is allocated to parking we might as well utilise it to ensure the maximum utility.
If say 4 out of every 5 street parking spaces are empty compared to say only 1 out of 5 spaces being empty the pedestrian amenity of the area is largely the same. It will also have no impact on the Cycle / Transit lane provision. To improve those things you need to rip out the parking spaces and re-allocate the space.
But obviously that is the ultimate lane – remove the parjking spaces and reallocate the space. But because of the inertia from 60 years of pro-car planning, AT has to do all this in baby steps lest the Baby Boomers freak out.
In particular so that AT can manage all the business in the inner city who are convinced that if there is not a parking space right outside there shop, they will have no customers. Shared spaces and slowly stranging the parking supply will gradually wear those arguments down.
And yes – it is a war on cars – in that it is a movement to balance a system which is way out of kilter in favour of cars and against human beings.
So… AT can put in 4.5M and get meters that communicates with individual customers, but we still dont have a PT realtime info system that works, even on the train stations let alone individualised messaging, after X years and X millions? If I could HOP my parking ticket then I certainly hope the tech benefits could flow back the other way!
Recent board reports suggest they are working on a total replacement for the real time system.
to be fair PT real-time info is more complicated than parking technology. But you’re right insofar as the level of expenditure involved in getting an RTI system that does not work. The Airbus of all things does seem to work on RTI, which is frustrating when you’re trying to decide whether to wait for the bus or take a taxi.