A seemingly constant issue for residents of city fringe suburbs are the problems created by people from other parts of the city, driving and parking in streets, often to avoid the high parking costs in the CBD by taking advantage of free parking and cheaper public transport fares. One of the noisiest neighbourhoods on this issue has been St Marys Bay and to try and address the issues, Auckland Transport last year started a trial of a residents parking scheme whereby local residents paid for an annual permit to enable them to park on the street while visitors without a permit were restricted to a maximum of a two hour stay. The trial was recently extended until July next year but it seems residents are once again not happy with the suggestion that there could be changes to the scheme.
Residents of Auckland’s city fringe are worried their streets could become “parking lots” under Auckland Transport plans timed to take place after October’s local body elections.
The St Marys Bay Association wrote to residents this month warning the council-controlled organisation was considering a coupon parking scheme where commuters pay to park in streets just outside the city centre.
“This makes a mockery of Auckland Council’s policy of promoting public transport.
Instead of commuters taking public transport from their homes, they’re taking it from our homes and turning our streets into parking lots,” the letter said.
A trial parking scheme was set up in St Marys Bay last year after residents complained commuters were using street parking. Residents pay to park on the street and visitors park free for up to two hours during the day. The trial was renewed for a second year last month, but a July 31 Auckland Transport online survey of parking did not mention any proposed coupon scheme, the letter says.
Auckland Council was planning to put a new inner-city parking scheme to the public for consultation in October, “probably after the council elections”, it said.
In previous items of news (and even in the Skypath discussion documents) the St Mary’s Bay Association (SMBA) has indicated that they have been very happy with scheme in place. But that support for the scheme is quite understandable considering how cheap it actually was for them to get permits, they cost:
- 1st Permit, linked to vehicle registration – $70
- 2nd Permit, linked to vehicle registration – $100
- 3rd Permit, linked to vehicle registration – $150
- Visitor permit (1 per property), not linked to registration – $70
The area covered by the parking scheme is below
The problem with this though is that for a relatively small cost it handed over space on publicly owned and paid for streets to a small group of individuals. Now just to make it clear, I don’t have an issue with residents paying a slightly cheaper rate for parking in their own area but I don’t like the fact that anyone else isn’t able to even pay to park in a street just because they don’t live in the area. It seems that the reason this has made it to the paper today is that Auckland Transport plan to make some changes to address just that issue and allowing for people from outside the area to park on these streets for a fee.
Association secretary Wendy Moffett said the allegations were based on an email from Auckland Transport parking design team leader Scott Ebbett.
The email to the association said Auckland Transport wanted to cater to businesses and anyone wanting to stay longer than two hours. “At this stage we are looking at having a system where people can pay to park within the zone for longer than two hours … similar to Wellington where coupons are available.”
In Wellington, workers have to pay $7.50 to park in inner-city suburbs from which they could walk or take a short bus ride to the city.
To me this seems like a good idea as a way to get better use out of the street resource that exists. Residents still get a form of priority through their parking permits while any spaces left over can be used others providing they are willing to pay to do so. I also don’t think it is anti PT like the SMBA suggest. There are always going to be people who will prefer to drive, or drive and catch PT from closer to town. Both situations are fine providing the parking is priced right.
The last part of the article is almost comical though:
Jervois Rd clothes boutique owner Caroline Ellwood said businesses should be catered for under any new policy.
“I pay $8000 a year in rates with no parking,” she said.
Last I knew it wasn’t the council’s responsibility to provide carparks for businesses, although they have distorted the market somewhat through their stupid minimum parking requirements. However even putting that issue aside, a quick search reveals that Caroline’s boutique store trades under the name of Devine Goddess and a quick look on Google Streetview shows quite a bit of on street parking (with a 30 minute time limit). Perhaps she is expecting free staff parking too?
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Wouldn’t expect less than this from SMBA given their attitude to anything in their backyard they don’t approve of ala SkyPath.
However, some clarity is needed.
1. AT are trialling said scheme not Auckland Council – AT doesn’t get elected like AC councillors do, so it makes no difference when AT does anything as they’re not subject to public elections, so some trial being run the “after the elections” is just a red herring.
2. I don’t see that SMBA residents have any more rights to the public road outside their houses than I or you do. If they do then the Resident parking schemes are not an efficient way to manage the problem – they should be auctioned off to the highest bidders to maximise revenue to AT.
3. Having coupon parking options for everyone else (not a resident) only encourages more peak traffic as this effectively turns these suburbs into Park and Rides for those further out. – and as we all know, Park and Rides are not the answer here.
4. How will AT ensure that there is a fair allocation of parking permits to residents and “casual” parkers who use coupons or whatever?
Who is to say that some all the SMBA residents don’t rent out their $100 visitor parking permits (not allocated to a specific vehicle) for say $100 a month? – thus rorting the system and denying everyone else who doesn’t know a SMBA resident the right to park there? I would expect a 2 vehicle permit (visitors included) per property limit, but even so that could see all these streets clogged up 24×7 with cars – and thats not actually solving the problem of “people parking their cars in our streets” as stated by SMBA.
5. I don’t think that shopowners have any more claim to the parks than anyone else – despite the rates they pay. If they can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Issues like this will become more prevalent in inner city suburbs. There is already a noticable increase in residential cars parked on-street.
The sooner there is consistent policy around this for all inner suburbs the better. Residential parking permits would seem the obvious way things are heading here.
Would you treat/price residential parking permits more like monthly PT passes? E.g. $100 per month?
I wouldn’t have them at all but that figure p/mth seems more appropriate for wanting to claim a right over a public space.
“1st Permit, linked to vehicle registration – $70
2nd Permit, linked to vehicle registration – $100
3rd Permit, linked to vehicle registration – $150
Visitor permit (1 per property), not linked to registration – $70”
Am I the only person who sees the obvious flaw in pricing un-linked visitor permits cheaper than 2nd and 3rd permits?
Privileged rights over the public road for one vehicle at these rates is crazy enough- but multiple spaces!?
I was meaning that no one would buy a $100 2nd permit, because they’d all be parking their 2nd car on a $70 visitor’s permit.
Auckland Council could make a bomb if they extended the scheme over the entire city. Park on any public road at any time and you need a $70 annual permit. That’s probably good for $70million. Bump it up to $100 a month like Stu proposes and that’s over a billion dollars a year. No need to beg central government for money… Auckland could build as many tunnels as it liked.
On the surface that does seem like a flaw in the pricing scheme. People just need to buy permits for the number of vehicles they own less one and then tack on a visitors permit for their last vehicle. Voila – they’ve just saved money.
I agree with your proposal Obi – parking permits should be treated just like monthly PT passes. Priced for a zone, with possibly some discounts for people who buy for multiple zones and/or longer time periods.
Make it easy, but not necessarily free, to park in Auckland and you’ve just gone 1) generated additional revenue to fund transport improvements; 2) stimulated increased demand for PT and reduced operating subsidies; and 3) reduced demand for major road capacity expansions.
Stu,
I reckon its a bad idea.
But if you want to go down that route, then I think that the market should decide what these are worth, if AT are going to monetise every parking space in a given area (as they seem to be doing with non-resident coupon scheme), then they should be sold like PT passes e.g. a monthly one – with one exception – sold to the highest bidders on an open market to ensure that AT maximise the return. I am sure your inner economist would agree that its a suitable place for a free market.
Of course, how long before the shop owners start complaining that the coupon parkers are driving away their customers who can no longer find any close unoccupied timed parks so they don’t have any customers in their shop? Sure, the shop staff can park all day for a low fee, but if your customers can’t do likewise – you may not need any staff before too long as you’ll be out of business.
And the residents – sure they may be able to park on the street all day – but how long before they find that they are hoist by their own petard on this one and are out competed by coupon parkers?
– hell I’d be tempted to buy an old dunga, and park in SMBA residents car parks all day and night for $70 PA just to get up these guys noses given the way they’ve acted over SkyPath it would be just desserts.
So just how to do you fairly prioritise/maximise the competing rights of residents, coupon users (aka Park n Riders) and others for these scarce parking spaces?
In some ways its possibly a form of congestion charge – you pay (a pittance) ‘cos you live, work or shop in a congested part of town.
I can’t see it being easy to enforce for AT though. So the billions they think they could earn may be wiped by the enforcement needed to keep it fair.
All up its nothing but a lose/lose/lose for everyone in the long term – unless it drives real behavioural changes in all 3 of these types of car parking wannabes.
But to my mind the the key point is this – the residents of St Marys Bay (and the shop owners too) bought/rented/leased their properties without off street parking (or with limited off street parking), and yet are now expecting that they get provided almost for free as a right something that no other residents in other suburbs are given.
So what makes these people so very very special that they get such treatment?
And if these guys can now monopolise and monetise the public street – how many $100K’s does it add to their property values now that they can effectively buy 4 or more on street car parks for a few hundred dollars a year all up – when those same parks if they were off-street one would cost 100’s of thousands to build/obtain and would give the council that much at least in additional rates charges. So the revenue that council thinks its getting by charging for the public road, is in fact, not the windfall they think it is.
Greg, I did not say permits should be reserved for a narrow definition of resident. My suggestion would be to make them available to everyone, just price them higher. Happy to use an auction as a mechanism for finding the clearing price, although I’d suggest a Dutch auction for a tranche of permits every 3 months would be the way to go.
Stu I think selling these like how other commodities is sold is the way to go i.e. you all bid on the amount of money you are prepared to pay for the number of permits you are allowed, all bidders pay the top bidders price.
Any unsold permits are removed from the pool until the next auction in say 3 months.
That way, if a PT user wants to pay say $900 for 3 months parking for each permit, everyone pays the same.
The biggest problem seems to be that the residents really believe that they have special rights over the parking in their street. Convincing them that a CBD worker from Henderson has the same rights to park on their beautiful plane tree lined street would be a huge challenge.
Sadly its the same people who believe that they have the right to drive everywhere, everywhen with no congestion and a free parktoo.
Agree brucey. Larf. “This makes a mockery of the public transport policy, other people are not taking public transport” (even though cbd worker from Henderson has no rail link and he has to go to Newmarket to get to the city! And pay way more than 70 per annum to take the train or bus!”) but st Mary’s bay need somewhere to park their extra cars. clearly inner city suburbs have the best access to public transport for themselves and their guests. Perhaps they could try public transport.
Its not just CBD workers they object to either Brucey – its anyone who isn’t approved (basically either a resident or visitor).
Thats why they’re so against SkyPath as they believe it would clog up their streets with cyclists and tourists wanting to use the Skypath.
So,your CBD worker from Henderson shouldn’t feel too hard done by, he is just another example of the SMBA’s crusade against the great unwashed.
I think its entirely reasonable for residents (of anywhere) not to want their streets clogged up with cars that do not belong to the area. I think when you rent or own a house there is a reasonable expectation that you will be able to park outside or near to your home.
Obviously anyone that owns a car is going to park it away from there house and any sensible person understands there is give and take. If Im parking outside your house one day you could be parking outside mine tomorow.
Most of the time this sorts itself out as there is no demand for parking beyond local residents but in areas of high demand, near to city centres then obviously there is an eliment of day parking. Ussually this is controlled by metres and residents permits that are designed to discourage commuters from driving to a PT point and free parking for the day.
I think any expectation that roads in SMB or any other residential area should be PT park and rides is entirely unfair and not to be encouraged. The fact that many of you think this is acceptable is another good reason for all local residents of SMB and Northcote Point to oppose Skypath. In fact Ill be taking a screen shot of some of your comments and submitting it as part of my objections to that project.
Its not a crusade against the ‘great unwashed’ its people who have paid a lot of money to live in an area not wishing to have it turned into a car park for people too tight to pay parking charges in the CBD.
What is your actual point here Phil? When you buy a house you buy the property on the title. You’ll note that it doesn’t include anything past the boundary and there are no rights in relation to this.
Expectations are fine, but the basis for those expectations change over time.
The amount they paid is neither here nor there- does someone who has lived in the area for 40 years and paid say $10k for their house have lessor rights than someone who moved in last week and paid several millions? Based on your last sentence you would think so.
As far as I’m aware there is no ‘encouragement’ of using the streets of St Mary’s Bay as a PT park and ride. I think you’ll find the basis of AT’s proposal (based on the report in the paper) is to cost casual all day parking in the area at the same rate you would pay for ‘early bird’ parking in many city fringe private car parks. So if anything, they are proposing to do the opposite to what you seem to be complaining about.
“In fact Ill be taking a screen shot of some of your comments and submitting it as part of my objections to that project.”
I suggest you get someone who knows how to spell and punctuate to check it for you first.
How is this possibly a basis to skypath opposition? Many of us find it acceptable that our roads are used democratically, thus the harbour bridge should be the same.
The scheme in Wellington seems to work quite well, with a mixture of coupon parking zones, residents’ only parking (8am-6pm 5 days) and residents’ only parking (24/7) depending on how close an area is to the CBD and how much demand there is for parking. Often a street will have a mixture of residents’ only parking areas and coupon parking so that both residents’ and visitors’ needs are catered too.
Have a look at the council website ( http://wellington.govt.nz/services/parking-and-roads/parking/residents-parking ) and note how there is a limit of two permits per dwelling, or one permit per multi-unit dwelling.
This is the problem with expectations. If the council offers free, unrestricted on street parking to anyone then the law doesn’t currently match people’s expectations – apart from SMB where resident’s permits apply. As Conan says, what is your actual point Phil?
Some cities have charges based on zones and registered vehicle type engine size, so if you have a small car you pay less. Guess there may be large vehicles (space wise) around with low cc rating, but seems quite a good way of rewarding those with smaller cars. Free parking for electric cars is probably a few decades off given the rate Auckland adopts things.
The benefit of electric cars is that they don’t emit as much carbon – but cars don’t emit anything while they’re parked. What on earth is the point of giving electric cars free parking?
The whole thing is just a ‘habit’. Do I have a right to be able to park my hypothetical car outside my front door, on Queen Street, 24/7 for free? Of course everyone will say that is an absurd demand, and that I’m a fool for expecting that somewhere with such high parking demand, but then so are they. Why do they have more rights to on street parking outside their door than I do? The answer is that they don’t, it’s just too foreign a concept.
If Phil wanted guaranteed parking then he should have bought a place with off-street parking, either in SMB (which would have been much more expensive) or further out where space permits (which would have been less expensive but probably in a less desirable location than SMB).
The fact he did neither means he took the risk that parking outside his house would be difficult, perhaps unavailable, at certain times. That’s the risk. Trying to come through the backdoor now and saying you want to claim ownership of a public space for a pittance? Bludger.
So while I am generally opposed to parking permits I think they are here to stay, but should do so at something closer to market value. That is, the cost of paying parking fees 24/7. No discount (why should there be?) but I’d be prepared to give residents the first option of up to two spaces per house.
Finally, allowing residents to buy “visitor” permits…WTF? They aren’t a resident so tough. They can pay and walk like every other non-resident who parks there.
To be clear, Phil has a place with offstreet parking – its on the Northcote Point where the northern end of Skypath will land.
His objection to all this is based the fact that he believes the higher the price you (as a SMB or Northcote point resident) pay for your property that it translates into ipso facto more rights and say over how public spaces such as roads and parks near you are to be used (or not used) than any other person who did not pay as much and/or who does not live in the same area yet may want to use said parks or public spaces for any legal purpose.
Most of the people on this blog are solid lefties like me, although quite a few suddenly transform into hard-core libertarians when it comes to parking. A lot of you support parking schemes where spaces are flogged off to the highest bidder, but I’d rather our council made decision about what was in the best interests of the public, rather than what made the most money.
Assuming that we’re not going to significantly change the amount of on-street parking that’s there, it seems that parking policy should prioritise those who need it most, or who get the most value from it (even if they can’t necessarily outbid anyone):
1. emergency vehicles
2. deliveries, who really need to get as close as possible
3. people picking up and dropping off passengers
4. short-term visitors, since they don’t have any real option for other parking.
5. residents who can’t have off-street parking because the council forbids building any.
6. residents who don’t have off-street parking, but could (in principle) build or sublet it.
7. people using the street as a park-and-ride, especially when they could have used PT or parked elsewhere.
8. residents who already have off-street parking.
In most residential streets, including the inner suburbs, there’s more than enough parking to satisfy the needs of 1-4 for free, around the clock. So the obvious parking restriction is to have a few free but time-limited spaces on every block, then worry about who gets the rest, and what they pay.
As for why we should prioritise residents over park-and-riders, that’s because residents benefit more. If residents can’t park then they can’t own a car at all. If visitors can’t park, then they either have to park somewhere else, or avoid using the car for just one trip. Plus, residents are the only ones who can build off-street parking, so letting them park on the street will discourage the building of yet more parking (which will just encourage more driving).
That’s not to say that living somewhere gives you the right to park a car on the street for free forever, but while there’s free space then why not use it? It makes more sense to share a pool of flexible on-street parking than encourage everyone to build unsightly, more dangerous, and less space-efficient off-street parking. Especially for rental properties, where it doesn’t make sense to make a long-term investment like building parking spaces, when different tenants from year to year might have radically different numbers of cars.
“5. residents who can’t have off-street parking because the council forbids building any.” Sorry but where does this ever happen?
Generally, inner city suburbs with heritage controls, where you generally need resource consent to build off-street parking, consent that’s not in any way guaranteed. There’s no blanket rule against it, but you can end up with a combination of restrictions that make it impossible in practice. Scarborough Terrace for example.
It’s not a huge fraction of houses, but if you do fall in that boat I think you have a better claim to on-street parking than other residents.
You also need to consider that the people who buy houses in these areas without off-street parking pay $100-200k less for their property compared to someone who has off-street parking. Giving the houses without off-street parking a cheap permit that guarantees them parking will instantly increase the value of these houses – so they are the real winners. Maybe people with kids should get priority permits because you need to drive kids around to soccer games in the weekends and hence need a car. Also people with pets because if they pet gets sick they will need a car to take them to the vet. Any tradies will need permits also to park their white van near to the house with all those valuable tools.
Steve, I’ve owned two houses without offstreet in these areas and I don’t see how that is anything but my call. I don’t see how people who have knowingly bought houses without parking can then claim some right to public land. As Brucey says you pay less, just as you pay less for smaller houses or one with fewer bathrooms…. If i bought a house with only one bathroom should I have a special right to piss in the street, or at least perhaps my visitors should?
Brucey:
Those houses do cost less exactly because the council makes it an expensive ordeal (or just plain impossible) to build off-street parking. Funny that. I’m not saying that I think heritage restrictions are necessarily a bad thing – and if they reduce the amount of off-street parking we build, it is kind of positive. But if the city benefits from forbidding people to build parking at their houses, then maybe the city can give something in return.
And no resident’s parking permit anywhere in the city guarantees you a park. The current ones (in Auckland) exempt you from time limits and fees at meters. Wellington’s scheme does reserve some parks on the street for residents only, which is going a bit far, but it’s much less than one parking space per permit-holder, and every street has at least half the spaces available for short-term parking and coupon buyers.
Patrick:
I’m not saying they have a right to anything in particular, but if the council is going to provide parking why not prioritise it for people who will get better use out of it? That is, people who are actually are driving to and from the area, and especially short-term visitors. If you want to get rid of on-street parking entirely, you should make that case. Maybe a bus lane, or a street tree, or a tiny house, or a shark pit or something would be a nicer use of that space, but for now it seems like we’re just arguing over whose car is going to sit there.
In some cases, of course, there will be enough demand that limits on the number of cars per household that qualify, or charging a reasonable rate are the only solutions to ration long-stay parks. In places like the CBD right now there’s enough demand for short-stay parking that we effectively ban long-stay completely.
It’s also worth remembering that on-street parking, if it stops the construction of more off-street parking, can be a good thing. There’s the ugliness you documented, the effective widening of the street, leading to faster traffic, and it doesn’t even provide many more parks, since a driveway generally takes out an on-street space.
SteveD: “and it doesn’t even provide many more parks, since a driveway generally takes out an on-street space”
There is another income earner for the council… charge people for having driveways. You shouldn’t get to drive across the public footpath or deny the council the opportunity to charge for a parking spot just because you have a driveway. Charge all households in the city $100 a month if they have a driveway. Don’t pay? Build bollards across the driveway. Then charge them $100 a month to park on the street. People will all agree that this sort of principled charging scheme is indisputably fair and no one will mind paying for it, especially if the money is used to buy trains which surveys show are enormously popular. It’ll be a vote winner for whoever suggests it.
Obi:
Exactly. If you want change, you need to show people your vision of what things are going to be like, why it’ll be better, and how to get there. Rocking up and announcing you’re going to charge people through the nose for parking for no real reason is going to lose you an election, not change anyone’s mind, or improve the city.
I think the fact that most of the people on this blog are ‘solid lefties’ is the problem 🙁
Whilst I do not think that ‘liberal’ should be a dirty word I think ‘left wing’ should be. The problem with left wing poltics is it trys very hard to steal wealth from the few to make everyone poor. I am not in favour of promoting jealousy motivated taxes or laws and if someone paid millions for there house because it was in a very nice area then they have every fracking right to keep that area nice. That means without the intrusion of Joe Blogs from Henderson using the streets as a free park and ride and without 5000 cyclists doing the same.
If ‘someone’ owned the street they would have ever right to keep Joe Blogs out. But ‘someone’ doesn’t. Everyone does.
I think Auckland should do what Tokyo does: you simply cannot legally register a car there unless you have off-street parking. Letting car-owners park their vehicles on publicly owned land for nothing is ridiculous. A good example of how ridiculous the sense of entitlement to the public parking/road space outside one’s property can get was in Wellington where the council proposed abolishing on-street parking so the space could used for a bus lane along Constable St from Newtown to Kilbirnie – one of Wellington’s major arterial roads; the residents started howling like startled infants whose dummies had been taken from them…lots of talk about “property values” etc etc.
Well, Tokyo solves that problem magnificently anyway, by simply having no room for on-street parking without getting in everyone’s way. That’s not a problem in a city with A. lots of stuff within walking distance and B. a decent public transport system for longer trips.