Cheaper parking proposed for Tauranga | Bay of Plenty News | Local News in Bay of Plenty

Cheaper parking on many downtown streets. Longer parking periods on some streets. Free weekend parking in council carpark buildings.

These are three major proposals the city council is considering in an effort to encourage more people to shop in Tauranga's downtown.

The issue of parking and its costs in the CBD has been controversial among retailers and the community.

A workshop yesterday of the council and key retail and economic development organisations has laid the foundations for a more level playing field between the downtown and its free-parking competitors elsewhere in the city.

It includes a proposal for free weekend parking in the council's two parking buildings - an annual revenue loss of $51,000.

The meeting at Baycourt did not make any decisions and a final workshop will be held prior to the complete package going to the council.

There was broad agreement on wide-ranging measures, including reducing parking fees on fringe CBD streets, from $1.20 to $1 per hour.

This would combine with allowing people to park longer on the lesser used one hour and two hour carparks outside the retail hub.

Two-hour parking limits on parts of Durham St, Cameron Rd, Wharf St, Hamilton St, Harington St and the early avenues could be extended to three or four hours.

It was also proposed to increase the one-hour limit on parts of Grey St to ninety minutes and to axe restrictions in parts of 4th Ave.

The exception to the general loosening of times was in parts of Elizabeth St where P60 parking could be halved to 30 minutes.

Willow St, hard hit by recent roadworks that led up to the establishment of the bus transport centre, could be a winner, with parking fees proposed to halve to $1 an hour.

Carparks along The Strand would retain their two-hour limit but with fees dropping from $1.20 to $1 per hour.

The council's financial controller Paul Davidson laid down the gauntlet early in the three-hour workshop by asking if the objective was to maximise occupancy of carparks or to maximise revenue.

The proposed new approach towards higher occupancy of carparks by cutting fees was calculated to increase usage by 5 per cent - not enough to make up the lost revenue.

It would see annual revenue from on-street parking fall by $103,000 to $2.21 million.

Downtown parking returned a surplus to the council last year of $450,000 - money used to repay debt on the two parking buildings.

However the surplus was dropping since the council decided to double the waiver period for tickets it issued for expired warrants and registrations - from one month to two months.

Mayor Stuart Crosby said it was just not practical to have free parking in the downtown.

The challenge was to make sure that parking was used efficiently. Cr David Stewart said the focus should be on turnover of parking.

Denis McMahon, of McMahon Commercial, said parking charges were quite reasonable in Tauranga and he backed simplifying the $1.20 an hour charge to $1 so people did not have to scratch around for 20c.

But Cr Larry Baldock said rounding down to a dollar would not make much difference because people usually fed in enough money for the time they intended to stay.

Cr Stewart pressed for the weekend free parking in the parking buildings to be trialled for a year.

"There may be a benefit that more people will get used to using the carpark buildings."

Mainstreet Tauranga manager Kirby Weis supported reducing charges in low occupancy parking areas first, and to see how that impacted on high occupancy areas.

The workshop asked for more information on a proposal to run free Bay Hopper buses on Saturdays - potentially costing $260,000 a year. It could be funded in partnership with the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.