New Hamilton CBD parking regime still not ‘easy’ says business leader

Wednesday, 12 March 2025

Business leader Vanessa Williams says some people still struggle with the new parking kiosks in Hamilton and that more work’s needed to make things ‘easy’ for people.

Confusion around central city parking is making it “too hard” for some, “so we don’t come in,” a CBD leader’s been told.

Complaints include a pricing structure that’s hard to get your head around, and that payment kiosks are hard to find and require too many buttons pushes, councillors heard.

Hamilton Central Business Association general manager Vanessa Williams presented her concerns at Tuesday’s city council infrastructure and transport committee meeting.

The parking system ‘needs to be really clear’ to avoid putting people off, Hamilton Central Business Association general manager Vanessa Williams says.

They’re linked to parking changes introduced last October, where two hours free in the CBD shrank to just one free hour of on street parking a day between 8am and 8pm Monday to Saturday. The first free hour must still be logged in the app or at a kiosk.

The second hour’s more complicated: $1 in a designated yellow zone and $3 in the green zone. The third hour onwards in both is at $6 per hour.

Williams said the overwhelming feedback she was hearing from motorists is that “parking needs to be easy”.

Waikato Times reporter explains how to register parking in Hamilton central using the electronic meters and PayMyPark mobile app.

“At the moment it doesn’t feel easy across a number of different audiences.”

A number of young people she’d spoken to said “it’s just too hard, we don’t know what to do so we don’t come in…I think that’s really sad”.

People wanted simple messaging that could be understood quickly on the subject rather than “large amounts of data that have to be read”.

“It just needs to be really clear.”

One complaint was people having to push a “continue” button too often at kiosks “so people haven’t had parking validated because of not going through enough screens - again that doesn’t feel easy”.

There are two parking zones with different prices - Hamilton Central Business Association general manager Vanessa Williams thinks it’s clearer with just one.

Some were still unclear over how long they could park and payment methods.

Kiosks to register and pay for parking could sometimes be hard to find, she said. “For some people it’s just not enough, it’s not accessible, it’s not easy.”

Some drivers thought they were now limited to one hour in the CBD, not realising they could pay for more.

Williams felt replacing the green and yellow zones with one zone could help make things easier and wanted more “how to” parking messaging from the council.

One option might be to just have messaging that said one hour free, $2 an hour thereafter.

Committee chairperson Angela O’Leary predicted a councillor workshop might be a way of looking at the sorts of points raised by Williams. The council later confirmed there would be a new separate workshop on parking at a date to be determined.