New $6-a-day parking areas hit CBD ‘free’ zones

Tuesday, 19 September 2023

If you have a sneaky free CBD parking spot, you might want to check the council isn't now asking you to pay for it.

Rocking up to his Monday morning Muay Thai martial arts class, Johnathan Nathan was surprised to hear from a reporter that his vehicle was in a new $6 per day parking zone on Vialou St.

It’s one of six that the city council introduced last week: in parts of Grantham, Rostrevor, Tristram and Vialou Streets, and Hamilton Parade, down by the Waikato River.

The council pitched it as an expansion of all-day paid parking to meet demand, though it covers some previously free and untimed areas that commuters were already using.

For Nathan, Monday’s solution was to do a U-turn and park on the opposite side of Vialou Street, which was apparently outside the new $6 zone.

He won’t be the only one making adjustments as the council expands the $6 a day on-street parking regime - one which has already been running in CBD streets including Liverpool, Harwood, and Knox.

The six new areas have been live since last week but were announced in a media release on Friday. A visit to Vialou St on Monday showed far more empty spaces than normal.

And more $6-a-day zones are likely, the city council says.

Asked for his view on the charge in a formerly free area with no time limit, 19-year-old Nathan clearly wasn’t impressed.

“Why do we have to pay to park is the real question,” he said.

The new areas being used for $6 a day spaces included old 2-hour limited parking and meters spots, and zones where no charges were levied.

Infrastructure and transport committee chairperson Angela O’Leary said on Monday the areas, to be paid for using a council app, were not about generating more revenue but about helping manage CBD parking “where everyone’s fighting for space”.

“As we see how these go…we’ll be able to look at other areas around the city.”

The council has to manage demand and “a user pays system does that very effectively”.

On why the zones hadn’t been introduced sooner, O’Leary said there had been some resistance politically to more CBD charges.

But the council now had good technology to support the change and there was a wide understanding that space was under commercial and residential pressure in a busier CBD environment.

“There’s a wider recognition we have to manage demand in the inner city and these charges are one way to do that.”

O’Leary said it was accepted there would be teething problems with people not realising they had to pay.

“We won’t be suddenly going out there and ticketing everyone.” Rather the council would use education to gain compliance with making payments.

Councillor Geoff Taylor - who championed the “two hours free in the CBD” parking meters policy - said the new areas had been “in the works for a long time” and he supported them.

Because some of the metered parks weren’t being used much “it made sense to open them up to all-day parking” and he didn’t expect this to affect parking for shoppers.

Taylor also believed the switch would make the two hours free zones easier to police.

In a statement, city transport unit director for infrastructure operations Gordon Naidoo said car parking demand was increasing rapidly.

“As Hamilton grows, it’s critical our central city is set up to support the increase in people travelling in for work, to shop or to eat.”

All-day paid parking would keep growing at sites based in part on high occupancy of nearby parking areas, the statement said.

Having fewer metered parks in the city meant parking staff could better manage areas where people were using time-limited parks for long stays.

The flat $6 charge applies from Monday to Friday between 8am and 5pm, with payment to be made using the PayMyPark app.