Council rejects early bird park bid

A MOVE to reinstate early bird parking in Hobart’s council-owned car parks has been defeated during a long and at times heated debate at the Hobart City Council.

Early bird parking was removed from council car parks in January in a bid to reduce congestion and free up car parks for shoppers.

At Monday night’s council meeting, a notice of motion was submitted by Aldermen Simon Behrakis, Marti Zucco, Jeff Briscoe and Councillor Will Coats about parking infrastructure.

It called on the council to continue to work with the state government to speed up policies to improve public transport services within the city, investigate locations which could be used as full day park and ride facilities and consider the implementation of early bird parking in Hobart Central and other council-owned car parks.

“It is estimated that only a 7-9 per cent decrease in car volume during peak hour would reduce congestion to school-holiday levels,” the notice of motion said.

“Worsening the experience for those that choose to, or need to, travel by car in an attempt to force them into using alternative means of travel is only detrimental to the majority of residents and ratepayers.”

A response to the notice of motion from general manager Nick Heath noted work being done through the Hobart City Deal and that a range of city fringe locations were being considered for park and ride.

After more than an hour of debate the motion to reinstate early bird parking was rejected.

WASHINGTON: The US stands on the brink of recording 500,000 COVID-related deaths as nations globally pressed on with vaccination rollouts.

The catastrophic US toll comes as some signs of hope are emerging in the world’s hardest-hit country, with millions of people now vaccinated and winter’s massive spike in infections dropping.

But deaths are still coming, and President Joe Biden last month warned that “well over” 600,000 people in the US could die from the virus.

“It’s terrible. It is historic. We haven’t seen anything even close to this for well over 100 years, since the 1918 pandemic of influenza,” Mr Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci told NBC’s Meet The Press.