Solving parking plight
ANYBODY who has tackled their Christmas shopping over the past few days knows how stressful it can be to find a parking spot.
It’s an experience common to many who work in the Geelong CBD, where all-day carparking places can be either expensive or difficult to find.
Parking in the CBD has also long been a challenge for the City of Greater Geelong, with many man hours dedicated to trying to find the right balance between providing affordable parking for workers and short term options for shoppers, while continuing an important revenue stream.
The latest initiative in the city’s investigation into the issue is the “Parking in Central Geelong” discussion paper.
The paper outlines many of the challenges surrounding managing parking in a growing city that is heavily reliant on car travel, with almost nine out of 10 daily commuters travelling to Geelong in a single car.
It warns that making parking cheaper could add to traffic congestion, and even suggests raising the cost of parking in high-demand areas. Creating more space to encourage bike riding and public transport are also flagged as options.
There’s no doubt that such dependence on cars is a recipe for disaster. As our cousins up the highway in Melbourne are currently experiencing, heavy reliance on cars only leads to traffic snarls as the population grows. Not to mention the flowon effects to the environment and pressure on our road infrastructure.
The obvious solution to both the CBD carparking pressure as well as our car dependence is a far more efficient public transport service. With more and more people moving to our coastal areas for lifestyle reasons, equally there are more and more cars clogging up our roads. A major reason for this is the lack of rail infrastructure to the Surf Coast and Bellarine Peninsula and what appears to be an inadequate bus service.
Our public transport services must improve if we are to encourage the cultural shift required to get people out of the cars. Until then, parking will continue to cause headaches.