Thank goodness we don’t have minimum parking requirements in the CBD. An article in the herald this morning highlights just how expensive carparks are in the CBD.
Central Auckland carparks are on the market for as much as $75,000 – a price one expert says could prove a bit of a bargain in the long run.
A park beneath the Quay West hotel/apartment building at 8 Albert St, near the Customs St East intersection, is leased for $320 a month.
“This is a simple one,” said Barfoot & Thompson agent Jason Buckwell, who is advertising the tiny space.
“A central city carpark. A strip of concrete plus two lines of paint, currently leased for $320 per month.”
The CBD is one of the only places in the city (if not the only one) to currently have no minimum parking requirements. While $75,000 isn’t the construction price, it does show just how much impact there might be if we required every apartment in the area to have one or more carparks – adding thousands on to the cost of dwellings making them less affordable. Instead the market is deciding just how much a carpark is worth, yet even then spaces are probably undervalued thanks to a lot of free/cheap parking on the city fringes. This is partially picked up upon in the article.
He provided an international comparison which showed Auckland CBD parking was cheap compared to other major cities. Wellington was more expensive.
The article notes that there has been a focus on improving PT in recent years however the price of parking in the central city is probably being held artificially low by none other than Auckland Transport. AT are one of the biggest carpark owners with thousands of spaces across their various parking sites and while they have goals to increase PT usage, they also have goals to achieve high occupancy rates and good financial returns from their parking operations. For casual parking AT is by far the cheapest operator in town and any price rises have the potential to attract political pressure, something the private operators don’t feel. You have to wonder what would happen to parking prices if they weren’t involved.
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Of course, some will argue that the prices are artifically INFLATED by the maximum parking cap the CBD has.
Their argument would be a little bit more defensible if they weren’t also usually the same people who opposed removing minimum parking. Let the market decide – but only where it suits our ideology.
Curious, What is the maximum parking cap for the CBD?
It depends on where the property is.
Where a site is located within the Central Parking District as defined in Figure 9.1, the maximum number of parking spaces shall not exceed the following:
Type 1 – Roads: 0
Type 2 – Roads: 1 space per 200 sq.m. of GFA
Type 3 – Roads: 1 space per 150 sq.m. of GFA
Type 4 – Roads: 1 space per 105 sq.m. of GFA
Type 5 – Roads: See clause 14.9.11.1 in Part 14.9 Wynyard Quarter.
http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/central/pdfs/part09a.pdf pages 11-16
It is very disingenuous for the agent to say: “A central city carpark. A strip of concrete plus two lines of paint, currently leased for $320 per month.”
In reality it is a lot more. It’s a 15m2 area on the floor of the building which requires not only circulation space to drive in and out of, but also ramps down from the level above and access ways in and out at the ground level. All up that one car park and its share of the rest probably occupies 50m2 of floor area. That’s 50m2 of floor area dug underground in a structure that supports a 40 story skyscraper above it, located in an area with the highest land values in the country.
$75 a week for 50m2 in a building downtown sounds perfectly reasonable to me, a little cheap even?
Maybe I should rent a carpark instead of an apartment, would be cheaper and just as roomy.
Commenters on this blog often refer to the cost of providing carparks (or the opportunity cost of the space) so it’s perfectly logical for that cost to be reflected in purchase/lease prices. If demand rises or falls that will be reflected in resale value. So I totally agree with Starnius – let the market decide.
Provision of parking in the CBD is not a charity. If a public authority chooses to allocate its land to public parking, the right price is – what the market will bear.
An authority that sells its parking space for les than the market price is being just as negligent in managing public resources as, say, a public property management authority that leases its buildings for less than the market price.
Has always mystified me why the council parking buildings are such a bargain compared to the commercial operators. I really can’t see what is in it for them to charge less than the market can bear.
Some great analysis here of why free parking is so bad for cities:
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/09/17/alan-durning-on-the-ruinous-vicious-circle-of-underpriced-parking/
Always so amusing how free market advocates back track as soon as the market looks like it might not deliver what they want. Free parking is a massive subsidy for businesses and motorists paid for out of my rates. Doesnt sound like capitalism or a free market to me.
I guess it is like the banks and the auto makers: Socialism for them, capitalism for us.