Reserves ringing Tauranga's downtown could provide a short-term solution to the CBD's growing shortage of public carparks.
The prospect of temporarily tapping into parks like the northern end of Memorial Park and Wharepai Domain was raised at yesterday's meeting of the city council's transport committee.
Councillor Larry Baldock said afterwards that there had to be a way through the legal issue of using a reserve for car parking, similar to how a big section of Memorial Park was currently the staging ground for thrusting the Southern Pipeline under Tauranga Harbour.
"Reserve land is difficult but are there ways to get temporary things going," he said
Another option was for commuters to use the council-owned Tauranga Marina carpark at Sulphur Point during the times when it was largely empty from Monday to Friday.
The idea would be to run a shuttle bus service to the CBD from Memorial Park and Sulphur Point, opening up more carparks in the downtown for shoppers.
"We want to address the current shortage of carparks," said committee chairman Rick Curach.
Council growth and infrastructure manager Christine Jones said the supply of short-term parking went wider than the CBD and a report would be brought to the council shortly.
Converting Wharepai Domain and Memorial Park would also need a budget so that the council could look at it for the financial year starting July 1, she said.
Councillor Terry Molloy said the council needed to start encouraging people to use buses, and not necessarily by being punitive. "We will be doing all we can to get people into buses."
However, Mr Curach it was the immediacy of the parking problem that needed to be addressed.
A report on historic levels of car parking, current car parking and future car parking in the CBD would be distributed to councillors for feedback.
The example of how the cities of Vancouver and Seattle had managed to do away with parking in their CBDs and get everyone onto buses was highlighted to the committee.
Councillor Bill Grainger responded dryly: "You will find they are much bigger cities."
Mr Curach said it would be a brave politician who did that.
A workshop held after the meeting dealing with the location of the CBD's bus interchange was told by council staff member Clare Cassidy that continuing to use Willow St was the best short-term option.
A lot of streets in the downtown were ruled out as being unsuitable.
Asked whether the interchange or bus centre could be off-road, she said it was a longer-term consideration.
" But this is temporary. There are no off-road possibilities in the six-month timeframe."
The CBD would change considerably In the long term, she said.
Mr Baldock said the bus interchange would be an anchor and was something that needed to be decided regarding the city heart transformation.