Auckland parking: $4 for Park and Rides in slow-moving shake-up

Monday, 28 March 2022

All around central Auckland are 'parking craters', multi-million dollar plots of land being used as car parks. (Video from May 2021)

Charging up to $4 for park and ride spaces, and making kerbside parking the lowest priority use on many Auckland arterial routes are in a new strategy likely to be signed-off before October’s elections.

However, anxiety about public hostility and some lengthy processes ahead mean much change might not occur this decade, and not before 2030’s target date for cutting transport emissions by 64 per cent.

Signing off the Auckland Transport (AT) draft parking strategy might be one of the last big tasks for the agency and for councillors, before the October local body election, where transport is a big issue.

Charging for park and ride spaces is a small but highly-sensitive part of the planned changes, shifting the facilities from free parking to a premium service.

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Charging up to $4 for park and ride spaces is part of a new strategy likely to be signed-off before October’s elections.

Auckland Transport officials would not put a timeframe on when the change might occur, but one factor could be to wait for the replacement of the AT Hop ticketing technology, which could be years away.

Roads in black are key arterials where parking will be a lower priority.

AT already charges $6 a day at the Matiatia ferry terminal on Waiheke, but it appears to have had little effect on shifting travellers out of their cars.

No cost park and ride facilities fill quickly such as this one at Silverdale, on Auckland’s North Shore.

“We see usage so high that we’ve had to create a second overspill park and ride, and we are now doing a multi-million dollar upgrade of that whole facility,” said Andrew McGill, the head of Integrated Network and Planning.

Across Auckland, the city will be divided into three tiers of priority for a reduction in on-street parking, starting with more central, higher density areas, and moving out to lower density suburbs.

McGill said the creation of more than 100 fully consulted, Comprehensive Parking Managment Plans (CPMP) was a huge task that could take ten years, and could change some of key arterial roads which make up 16 per cent of the city’s roading network.

Even on those arterial roads – the Strategic Transport Network (STN) – such as Great North Road and Great South Road, change would only occur when a new project came along, such as a bike or cycle lane.

In the top tier parts of town, resident on-street parking permits might no longer be issued to those in dwellings built after 2013, or to those in apartments.

Auckland Council has pledged to halve Auckland’s carbon emissions in 2030, just over eight years away, which will involve cutting transport emissions by 64 per cent.

The chair of the council’s planning committee Chris Darby, who is also the liason councillor with AT, said he was personally more ambitious about meeting those targets, than the timing the parking plan suggested.

“We are stepping through the politics of this and the consensus of this as well, and bringing Aucklanders with us,” Darby told Stuff.

“If we hear from Aucklanders that they want much stronger traction on this particular part of reaching a dramatic reduction in emissions, then we will act in response to that,” he said.

Public consultation on the draft is set to open later this week, and run until May 1.