Brian Kelly: Get off your butts for a change

There is a popular song by Fred Dagg that's called We Don't Know How Lucky We Are and the words to that song came to mind the other day when I read in the Bay of Plenty Times about free parking on a Saturday morning not attracting shoppers to downtown Tauranga.

Free parking - my God how many larger cities in this country, or the world for that matter, offer free parking for shoppers to enjoy?

I would hazard a guess: not too many.

And if you can't handle the one-hour restriction in some CBD streets, then there are the parking buildings.

Ah, the parking buildings. Why aren't people using the parking buildings?

Probably because most suffer from "If I can't find a park outside the shop, I'm not going in" disease.

We are incredibly lucky to have two large parking buildings in the heart of our city - and to have free parking made available on a Saturday is fantastic.

Try visiting a parking building or off-street parking area in Auckland or Wellington or for that matter Sydney or Melbourne and finding free parking.

It just does not happen. The minimum cost to park in an Auckland parking area is $3 per half-hour or $10 a day, and that's one of the cheaper ones.

In December, I stayed in a central Sydney hotel for two nights.

It was A$32 ($41.55) per night to park the car in the hotel car park.

Just recently I was asked to speak at an inner city hotel in Auckland.

I parked in the guest arrival area and approached the hotel reception, explaining that I was the guest speaker at a seminar being hosted in their hotel, and asked if there was an area I could park my car for the half-hour that I would be there.

The reply was yes, but it would cost me $16 to park the car at the hotel and it would be cheaper to park in the car park building next door.

I took the receptionist's advice and did just that.

When I finished my presentation, I returned to my car and paid my parking fee for the 45 minutes - $11.

As I said at the start of this article, we don't know how lucky we are in Tauranga, being offered free parking in our car park buildings with no time limit.

Take advantage of the offer and don't be lazy.

The Durham Street car parking building brings you straight out on to Grey St, right in the heart of the city.

You can enjoy the ambience of our lovely CBD without the fear of knowing that you are liable to get a ticket if you are parking for longer than an hour.

We are a funny bunch aren't we?

I mentioned last week that a little walking is great exercise and, throw in a flight of stairs or two, and you have done a great workout.

I do question why the Durham Street car park building is closed on a Sunday.

Admittedly, it's not such a busy day downtown, but try coming into the city for a coffee around 10am and there are not too many parks available at the bottom of Devonport Road.

The reason why?

Destiny Church parishioners have taken most of the parks.

It's not their fault but I do wonder why there is a church right in the middle of the city centre.

Where else are they going to park, if the car park building is closed?

A fourth parking survey is due out soon and I wait with interest to read the outcome.

In the meantime, we do have a vibrant city centre and we should use it.