Tauranga City Council to sign off new hourly on-street parking rates

New hourly on-street parking rates in the CBD are expected to be signed off by the Tauranga City Council on Monday. Photo / George Novak

New hourly on-street parking rates charging CBD workers about $21 a day are expected to be signed off by the Tauranga City Council this week.

Tauranga City commissioners will decide whether to adopt the new Parking Management Plan (Option 1) at today's council meeting.

The new plan aims to encourage workers to park their cars in the city's parking buildings or use alternative transport.

Under the proposed plan, the two-hour free parking trial would be removed from December 1 to make way for new hourly parking rates to discourage workers from using all-day parking in the CBD and encourage them to use parking buildings instead.

If approved, it would cost workers at least $21 per day to park their cars on the street for seven hours. Parking buildings have a daily rate of $17.

Failing to pay for parking will incur a $40 infringement fine.

Shorter parking limits, including five, 10, 30, and 60 minutes, could also be put in place across the CBD up to 11th Ave, including Memorial Park, from November 1, 2023.

In mid-2020, on-street parking in the city centre was made free for two hours to support business recovery after Covid-19. The temporary two-hour free trial has been in place for about two years.

According to the council, there are more than 5000 car parks within the Parking Management area in the CBD. More than 3000 are on-street parks and nearly 2000 are off-street parking spaces.

The parking spaces are currently managed by parking fees, time limits, leased spaces, and residents-only parking, plus almost 1400 "unrestricted" spaces.

The two-hour free trial resulted in a large proportion of the carparks being used by workers for long-stay parking, especially in areas without any parking restrictions.

It meant fewer parks were available for customers of central city businesses.

In a report to be presented to the council on Monday, service transformation manager Paul Dunphy, director of transport Brendan Bisley, and general manager of infrastructure Nic Johansson said there were five key benefits to adopting the new parking plan.

That included reducing congestion and carbon emissions, revitalising the city centre, and encouraging multimodal transport, as well as a user-pay model.

"We believe that it is the right time to make some changes to parking in the city centre.

"Our population has increased drastically in recent years and is predicted to grow by 50 per cent over the next 50 years, so there is increasing pressure on our roads for space, therefore this is the time to gear up for the future, to enable more travel choices to be made.

"Having more travel choices will contribute to ensuring we can move around our city easily which is one of the community outcomes."

The council meeting will be held at the council chambers at 1 Elizabeth St and start at the end of a Strategy, Finance and Risk Committee meeting that starts at 9.30am and includes the adoption of the Ōtūmoetai Spatial Plan and a report about a transport emissions projection tool.

Other items up for discussion at the full council meeting include the draft and final 2021/2022 Annual Reports for council-controlled organisations, a proposal to establish a council-controlled organisation for Site A of the Civic Precinct and the adoption of the Community Centres Action and Investment Plan.

Both meetings are open to the public.