Parking charges possible under draft strategy

A parking building for Richmond has been, well, parked.

However, parking charges may eventually get the nod under a draft strategy due to go out for public consultation in January.

The Tasman District Council draft Richmond and Motueka Town Centre Parking Strategy aims to manage an expected increased demand over the next 10 years.

It’s expected to do this through greater enforcement of timerestricted parking, changing longstay parks nearest the town centres to time-restricted parking over time and increasing capacity in existing public car parks.

There is also the suggestion of seasonal parking controls for peak times and the option of introducing charges for some highdemand locations in the next five to 10 years.

However, a multistorey parking building for Richmond does not feature in the proposals for the next 10 years, despite it forming part of the discussions leading up to the creation of the draft strategy.

Council activity planning manager Dwayne Fletcher said a reasonable parking building could cost ‘‘upwards of $7 million’’ and it was believed it was better to ‘‘use what we have available first’’.

There were also uncertainties around some expected drivers of the requirements for parking such as technological advances and the proposed development of supermarkets at both ends of Richmond.

‘‘They might have an effect in the town centre,’’ Fletcher said. ‘‘We don’t want to invest in a white elephant.’’

The draft strategy deliberately broad.

‘‘For the first five years, all the was actions are making best use of what we’ve got at the moment.’’

Those actions included proposals to make some of the 740 council all-day parks in Richmond and 500 all-day spaces in Motueka time-restricted.

That would likely mean more people parking all day in residential streets around the centres and the need to consider the provision of some time restrictions in those streets.

‘‘To enable people who want to visit residents to find some parking,’’ Fletcher said.

‘‘Is that what you [residents] want?

‘‘We want to take the wide pulse of the community.’’

Fletcher added that there would be further consultation before the introduction of any big changes such as parking charges.

Tasman mayor Richard Kempthorne said Motueka and Richmond were at a transition point.

‘‘Motueka and Richmond developed as rural service towns but the growth in our district means they are becoming urban centres in their own right and pressure on prime parking space is growing,’’ he said.

‘‘However, they are not at the point where major investment in new parking capacity is warranted – that’s probably at least 10 years away.

‘‘So we need to be smart about how we manage the capacity we have.’’

Kempthorne said the strategy was based on a low-risk approach to parking investment that may mean people needed to park a little further from their destination.

‘‘That might be using the offstreet car parks in Richmond town centre rather than parking on Queen St itself or it might be a fiveminute walk from the car for some people commuting in to work.’’

The draft parking strategy is due to open for public consultation from mid-January to late February. Hearings are scheduled for March 2018, with the adoption of the final strategy expected in May.