Keep Two Hours Free Parking

06/02/2021

Good piece here from Ashley Church about the perils of removing car access and car parks from central cities. There's a strong move on our council to get rid of 2 hours free parking and to turn current free commuter car parks into $8 an hour parks. There's also a push to clog up streets with bus lanes despite that our bus system is embarrassingly under used.

Comment: Auckland is supposed to be world class city but disruption is the norm now.

16/09/2019

The beauty of 2 Hours Free in the CBD is simplicity. Park and walk away. Here are two long-time Horowhenua residents who travel to Wellington regularly. Despite that they spent nearly 5 minutes on Sunday in Wellington trying to operate the parking kiosk. Not easy. I've also struggled to use kiosks in Auckland and Tauranga. If we make tweaks to our parking system in future, we must always remember to make it super simple to operate. Otherwise you scare people away.

18/07/2019

The Corflutes have arrived! Great work again NZ Sign Co.
Now to put them up! If anyone doesn't mind having a sign on their fence for a month or so they'll have a chocolate bar and my eternal gratitude. Help me Keep Free Parking!
Thanks all. If you can help perhaps send me a private message or call or text on 027 808 5170.
Thanks again everyone.

10/07/2019

2 Hours Free in the CBD arrives

Over some months, Hamilton City Council’s CBD Parking Task Force of which I was the chairman, analysed information and thrashed out how parking in the CBD should look. We decided that our biggest purpose as a council should be to ensure that parking played a park in revitalising the CBD. The overwhelming feeling from task force members was that at present, CBD parking was frustrating business rather than encouraging it.
Ultimately in early 2017 the task force recommended to the council that it consult with the public on a plan for 2 Hours Free parking in the CBD.
The reasoning behind it was that many workers were switching parks during the day and taking up spaces that could be used by shoppers. We needed to find a way to make these parks exclusively available for shoppers and ensure quick turnover.
And we needed to remove the pesky annoyance of having to fish in your wallet or purse for a $2 coin every time you came into the central city.
The task force proposed that CBD retailers pay a levy to cover a percentage of the lost revenue the council would receive from parking meters.
It was suggested that ratepayers make up the rest of the deficit. The reasoning was that we felt having a healthy, vibrant CBD would benefit the city as a whole as we all have a stake in it.
The plan went out for consultation with the annual plan and there was a big response from submitters.
As a result two changes were made: Ratepayers were no longer asked to make up the revenue deficit and it was decided to find the loss through a council surplus. Secondly, rather than now allowing parkers to stay any longer than 2 hours in the CBD, it was agreed to charge them $6 an hour for the third hours onwards. That would allow people to stay if they really wanted to but still encourage them to stay for less than two hours. Mark Bunting played a huge role in coming up with this idea.
A parking app ‘Pay My Park’ was also made available to allow people to check for free parks on a heat map and pay for parking on the app rather than using meters.
The nine month trial was launched in October 2017.
The trial was considered a success and extended in 2018 and then extended again in mid 2019 with overwhelming support from both CBD businesses and shoppers approached in numerous surveys.
Along the way there have been numerous council debates and at least half a dozen attempts by a block of councillors to stop 2 Hours Free in the CBD.
Leo Tooman and Garry Mallett have opposed the plan at every opportunity they’ve had.
Rob Pascoe and James Casson have been strong opponents as have Angela O’Leary and Siggi Henry until recent times. Paula Southgate also initially opposed the plan but has supported it a number of times over the last year. Huge thanks for their support to Mayor Andrew King, Mark Bunting, Dave Macpherson, Ryan Hamilton, Martin Gallagher and Paula.
In a future post I will discuss the impact 2 Hours Free Parking has had on the CBD.
- Geoff Taylor

08/07/2019

The Before 9 and after 3 experiment

The issue of on-street parking was apparently a key talking point during development of the 2013-2016 council's Hamilton Central City Transformation Plan.
You wouldn’t have known it - the great parking solution only occupied one page in the 76 page document. I think they call that once over lightly.
The solution they arrived at was the baffling ‘Free before 9 and free after 3.’
The plan was adopted in November and the public were asked to remember two parking zones: a blue and yellow zone.
The blue zone, which stretched from Tisdall Street in the south to London Street, offered free parking before 9am and after 3pm. The rest of the time it was $2 an hour.
North of London Street remained the same flawed $2 an hour system.
The parking zones were rolled out to the perplexed public in 2016.
Predictably the ridiculously complicated, confused regime made no difference to the issue it was supposed to address – bringing people back into the CBD.
When I stood for Hamilton City Council in the October 2016 elections, I was clear that something more dramatic was needed.

06/07/2019

The genesis of the introduction of 2 Hours Free in the CBD was years of concern and frustration about the terrible state of Hamilton’s CBD.
Once the Global Financial Recession hit in 2007 and 2008, the CBD’s fortunes began to ebb.
Although in subsequent years the country’s economy began to recover, the CBD did not. It was becoming obvious to all that it was turning into an embarrassing ghost town, at one point famously labelled “a dead duck” by Hamilton city councillor and future deputy mayor Gordon Chesterman.
There were many reasons for the CBD’s hard times. Previous council District Plans had been too permissive, allowing businesses to leave the CBD at will and promulgate freely around other parts of the city.
Meanwhile free parking at flourishing suburban shopping centres, The Base and Chartwell Shopping Centre began to take affect.
An underlying problem in the CBD was that while shoppers saw free parking elsewhere, in the CBD they still had to fish into their pockets for $2 coins to fill the old parking meters. If they didn’t they got pinged with parking fines.
The perception of the CBD as a destination suffered and people began to vote with their feet – as did retailers who headed to The Base in droves. This exodus only exacerbated the CBD’s problems as shoppers were finding the retail offering less satisfying in the central city.
While on the one hand, refusing to consider that free parking could be a solution, the 2013-16 council quietly tried to search for a solution.
That half hearted attempt at addressing free parking would prove to be a disaster.

06/07/2019

The focus of this Two Hours Free Parking Page is to ensure Hamilton City Council's 2 Hours Free in the CBD scheme continues on once the new council is elected. We will provide updates and latest information on how 2 Hours Free in the CBD is performing. We welcome your input and support.