I’m calling time on our obsession with parking. Building more parking spaces isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.
Like many regional communities, our residents love free car parking. In fact, they feel entitled to it and expect it to be right outside the shop door. Any suggestion by Council for paid parking or fewer car parking spaces, regardless of the benefit, are invariably howled down in an indignant public protest.
It is among the most hotly-discussed issues for just about every development application, with everyone from Council to the community, bent on the desire to surround our commercial developments with an ocean of car parking. In doing so they are giving the green light to increasing the number of vehicles that will use them and inevitably choke up our coastal lifestyle with snarling traffic jams.
That’s not why I choose to live on the Sunshine Coast or why I raise my family here, and I’m sure it’s not yours either. It’s time to reduce our dependence on car parking and look at viable alternatives.
Even our Project Urban Facebook posts about exciting new developments receive comments like “I hope it’s got lots of parking”. But it’s time we faced the fact that parking is not the solution, it’s the problem.
We need to reduce our dependence on car parking and look at viable alternatives which must include public transport. I’m among the first to admit that the public transport options on the Sunshine Coast require improvement, however, public transport will remain unviable, as long as we keep getting into our vehicles, and making all of our journeys by private car. As long as there are car parks at the destination, people will continue to drive their cars.
The Brisbane City Plan (town planning scheme) dictates that commercial developments in the city centre are allowed a maximum of one car park for every 200m² of floor area. And unless you’re early enough to get the early bird rate (about $27) parking your car in the Brisbane CBD for a day (4hrs+) at standard rates can cost $75+. In some of the world’s largest cities, like London, there is a toll ($25) on private cars every time they enter the city centre.
Then there are the obvious environmental considerations.
FACT – no building on the Sunshine Coast can achieve a six-star green energy rating because a key criteria for achieving it, is minimising the car parking (which can’t be achieved if you comply with the Parking Code). Then of course there’s emissions, congestion, carbon footprints, loss of productivity etc.
Even if we continue allowing the construction of more car parking, we need to be smarter about the way we provide it. Hundreds of square metres of bitumen car parks, baking in the sub-tropical heat hardly creates an attractive urban form or efficient use of available land resources.
We need to think outside the box and consider technology such as car stackers – think of a CD stacker, but for cars.
Car stackers have been successfully used in many overseas countries for decades such as Germany and Singapore. Earlier this year, a development application in Ann Street Brisbane was lodged, and it included a 6 level car stacker.
We all need to rethink car parking; councils, developers, business owners, residents; improve public transport and redeploy the vast areas of bitumen and concrete currently used for car parking in and around our commercial areas and put it to better use as public gardens, street-front cafes or leafy gathering places that will truly enhance communities.