AT has created a storm that never needed to exist.
Ten years ago, Aucklanders understood the law. You could not park a car on a verge or footpath, and vehicle crossings were for crossing the footpath, not places to park. If you parked there for more than a minute or three, you’d be ready with an apology.
Now cars are littering the public realm. Pedestrian malls, public plazas, footpaths, verges, driveways, edges of parks, bollarded-off service driveways… you name it, if drivers can physically manoeuvre a car into position, they will.
How did we end up in this anti-social and dangerous mess?
AT was formed in 2010. Now, apart from in the city centre, any enforcement is done only for parking on paved parts of the footpath or the vehicle crossing, and only in response to a complaint. As this has became more obvious the antisocial parking has became more and more of a problem.
I don’t know if they ever issued tickets for cars parked on verges, but Auckland Council used to. So people asked the question: “Why won’t you enforce the rules against parking on the verge?”
AT referred to a legal problem, while refusing to provide any details, and pointed people to the supposed need for a further law change, or additional signage everywhere.
Other councils didn’t require this change to take action. So when NZTA consulted about a change, many people rightly considered it unnecessary.
You see, the problem here is not the law. For typical urban streets the law is fairly clear:
- The road is the entire space accessible to the public.
- The roadway is the part of the road that is intended for cars to drive along.
- The footpath is a place principally designed for, and used by, pedestrians. Where there is a kerb, the footpath includes the kerb. The kerb is there to stop traffic from driving onto parts of the road that are not designed to take the weight of vehicles. Vehicle crossings of the footpath are part of the footpath.
My research is summarised here: Definition of Footpath and Road Margin
Under the present law, in a typical Auckland street, a grass berm or verge that is retained by a kerb is simply an unpaved part of the footpath.
The rules around parking are in the Road User Rule. Rule 6.14 covers parking on the footpath – you cannot park on the footpath. Rule 6.2 covers parking on the road, and says you should park off the roadway if possible. In urban areas with kerbs, this applies to parking bays and marked carparks. Otherwise you park on the roadway. Rule 6.2 does not override Rule 6.14 and authorise a driver to take over an unpaved part of the footpath.
AT could apply Rule 6.14 to ticket cars parked off the roadway on any part of the footpath, paved or unpaved. This includes the verges and vehicle crossings.
We don’t know what the legal advice AT received is, as they won’t release it. That advice is either wrong or based on such a limited instruction that it has missed the most crucial points, or AT are misinterpreting it.
Whether or not RUR 6.14 can be directly applied, the roading authority (in Auckland, AT) has broad power to set its own bylaws to manage the roads under its control (subject to signage requirements). Christchurch has set an example: they clarified that RUR 6.2(1) does not apply in Chistchurch – this clarification has no signage requirement.
AT should have addressed this years ago. Instead they have allowed a situation that was once clear to become murky, and now, politicised.
Auckland Council have been wanting this sorted for years, but were fooled that this is an issue of legislation. Instead, it is a cultural bias towards motorists over pedestrians, and an aversion to enforcement.
Auckland Transport admit they can ticket cars parked on the paved part of footpaths and in vehicle crossings. They just choose not to do it most of the time, and only in response to a complaint. A further change in legislation would simply have provided them with yet another law to ignore.
I have been in correspondence with Auckland Transport for the best part of a year on this issue. Until last week I was still hopeful that they would see reason and take action without my having to blog about it. However, they failed to reply by Friday as promised. After yet another media article of misinformation on Saturday, I feel obliged to respond.
The change required is not in legislation. It is within Auckland Transport.
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I think there’s a substantial number of non-SUV owning motorists who get tired of seeing this sort of stuff too. But I’d be careful assuming it was clear as mud ten years ago; I can remember playing sports in the Domain as a kid and seeing the line-up of CRVs, HRVs, RAV4s et al on the grass embankment (which is a volcanic crater, let’s not forget).
20 years ago I actually received a parking fine for storing my private property – car – on the grass verge of the domain. There were no signs any where but I still got it.
We have a very well established principle that ignorance of a law does not exempt you from the law.
We don’t have signs up everywhere telling people not to murder or steal, and we shouldn’t need signs up to tell people not to park in what is very obviously not a carpark.
Your ticket was probably an infringement of an Auckland City Council bylaw. 20 years ago there were no roads through the Domain, just some paved private accessways owned and controlled by the Council. They looked like roads, they were built like roads and they worked just like roads, but they were part of a park.
It doesn’t matter when a road was built or why, the legal definition of a road in New Zealand is as follows
A road includes—
(a)
a street; and
(b)
a motorway; and
(c)
a beach; and
(d)
a place to which the public have access “whether as of right or not”; and
(e)
all bridges, culverts, ferries, and fords forming part of a road or street or motorway or a place referred to in paragraph (d); and
(f)
all sites at which vehicles may be weighed for the purposes of the Act or any other enactment
Important people understand that definition, offenders who trespassed onto and drove on a football field some years ago in Auckland were convicted of dangerous driving and the court was able to impose that conviction and disqualification, as the park was deemed in law to be a road!
AT need to get with the times and release an app that allows easy reporting. A well framed picture with geolocation, date and time is all thats needed to identify the majority of offences. They wouldn’t even need to send out a warden most of the time.
It would also allow them to identify “hotspots” for this behavior so they can optimise where they send wardens to be most effective.
If you want an app.. how about “Snap Send Solve”?
Thanks.
AT won’t respond to pictures of infringements on ‘Snap Send Solve’, you need to call.
I hear your frustration.
Some very well paid persons at AT, as I read in the Herald over the weekend (meeting of Pt Chev residents), do not work for the public, they exist for some other reason. This is an empire that does what the it wants and answers to no one.
Part of the issue is the council insisting residents take responsibility for grass verges, you know, pay for their upkeep. Well they can’t have it both ways.
Local body elections are coming up. Trouble is you can’t vote AT out, all you get to vote for is useless local board councillors who have no control of anything, kind of a pseudo unemployment scheme to save them from real jobs.
It is way past time where there is a government review of Rodney Hide and John Keys little monster that is the Auckland Super City.
In their defense, I think local board members and Councillors of all stripes have been concerned about this. My local board members were actively trying to solve the issue. The problem is, they were fed misinformation.
Firstly, that a law change was required. AT has been saying to the media since 2012 that it’s actually “legal” to park on a verge as long as you don’t do any damage or obstruct anyone. This is incorrect. It’s not legal to drive on a verge or a footpath, let alone park there, so even if AT was having difficulty finding a way to enforce it, there was no call for claiming that parking there was legal. (Also, the amount of damage being done is comprehensive so AT could have been enforcing based on the evidence that verges are clearly not strong enough for vehicles and the damage is happening.)
Secondly, if a law change was going to be the easiest way to provide AT with new enforcement teeth, as many submissions as possible were required on the Regulatory Stewardship (Omnibus) Amendment 2018; a collection of various transport-related rule changes. In its discussion was a general question about whether parking on verges was a problem and needed clarification with a law change.
My local board didn’t submit, because they’d been advised that they only needed to submit in support of the governing body’s submission. Incidentally, AT deliberately did not publicise the issue so the public could submit, in the belief that there would be a whole lot of motorists submitting that they have a right to park on verges. Which seemed a little fragile at the time.
The people who submitted were those who happened to read it because there was something in their line of work that meant they were interested in the other transport rule changes. Taxi drivers, freight companies, well-paid motorists’ advocates, etc.
Yet it turned out to be a numbers game. The conclusion, which will have fed into the discussion and recent decisions at LGNZ, was:
“The question about whether a general prohibition from parking on verges should apply everywhere or only in urban areas, or only on roads with kerb and channel, is not clearly agreed or shared. The perspectives of the submitters will be taken into account to decide if a future policy project should be progressed.”
I am with your there Waspman. AT is a monster set up to follow the Watercare model because the boss of Watercare thought he had all the answers but he actually didn’t even know the questions.
AT are not incompetent because they choose to be. They are incompetent by design.
AT are worse than useless and their systems are rubbish. I had a small arguement with them last year about the repainting of some yellow lines on the street outside my property. They gave me 3 pieces of “information” all of which I had proven to be wrong within 24 hours. Their records were so poor that they actually initially tried to tell me that the yellow lines had not been put in by AT, or an AT approved contractor. I just laughed at them and asked if they were really trying to say that 2 weeks after I asked AT to repaint the yellow lines (which had been there for at least 20 years) some random dude with all the right equipment had just turned up at 10.30pm on a Sunday night and decided to splash some yellow paint around? I work on the principle that what they say first off is not correct and needs to be probed extensively to find the real story.
I note that the issue of parking on berms was debated at the Local Body conference on the weekend. The motion put forward by Auckland Council to eliminate parking on berms was lost with 70% against.
So 70% of local body think people should be allowed to park on berms?
Seems strange to me. Maybe we should set up a crowd fund to buy a bus and rotate it around counsellors berms – might change their minds…
The answer is build more park in rides and enforce the current laws.
Parking supply induces traffic. Not enforcing the laws has provided extra (illegal) parking supply.
Also, increasing parking doesn’t satisfy parking demand; it increases demand for parking. Which may seem counterintuitive, but it’s because of the extra traffic and the extra vehicle movements.
At facilities like soccer clubs, for example, if you increase the parking supply (either by putting in more parking, or by allowing illegal parking to grow), more people will drive, and fewer people will want to approach the club on foot or bike, due to that extra traffic and vehicle movements making it unsafe.
Parking management is one of the strongest tools AT has to influence modeshift.
Trouble is, the Parking Team have received no instructions from management to implement the “Modeshift” priority that AT claims is its second priority. (For example, they could review whether their practices are in line with policies or legislation. As they are not, such a review should show that sharpening up their act could influence modeshift.)
That’s right Heidi. If drivers have been hit over the head with policy and still are not doing what you want them to do then the answer is to hit them over the head with more policy. One day, if you are strict enough with people, they will learn to comply with your wishes.
still hitting people over the head with dumb comments.
the point was the parking team are the ones who can change things and are not following policy. any excuse to resist change (everyone does it!) is good enough for those privileged by the status quo
If you think it is a problem well it is only going to get worse as AT fail to manage on-street parking as they claimed they would and as the Auckland Unitary Plan allows for more development without parking.
This is simply the way of the future. People will park anywhere a car fits as they no longer have an alternative. AT supported removing all the alternatives. So best get used to it.
They have more alternatives than ever to driving, miffy. And there’d be less driving if AT had enforced the parking rules. You’re continuing the myth that with more people we’ll all drive more.
No, look at the vkt for somewhere like Barcelona. More density means much less driving.
u can’t scare me!
Heidi people have not bought into the idea that travel needs to be decreased through limiting parking (other than inside the CBD). If that is your goal then you should introduce a private Plan Change to the Auckland Unitary plan to alter the objectives and policies to state that goal. You should also push AT to dump there existing parking policy where they claim they will manage on-street parking through time limits and pricing and get them to adopt a policy of not providing parking.
miffy, what do you think these words in the Parking Strategy mean then, when it talks of how is in line with the (then) 30-year Auckland Plan:
“Under the Plan, parking supply and pricing should:
…reduce car travel to contribute to reduced energy consumption and climate change mitigation
…reduce dependence on car travel
…support the transformation of the public transport system
…enhance walkability”
Do you think the “supply” of parking reduces car travel and reduces dependence on car travel, etc, if the “supply” is increased or maintained? No, of course not. The word “supply” is used there specifically to mean that the supply will drop.
Both the AT Parking Strategy and the plan it refers to were consulted on.
Check out the Auckland Unitary Plan, the one that matters. The Auckland Plan had the weight of ‘plans required by other statutes’ when the AUP was developed. It limits parking within the CBD for all activities and for offices everywhere. Beyond that it either requires parking or is neutral. That is the plan that people submitted on and where their submissions were actually heard. I did a submission to the Auckland Plan where I told them the housing crisis was all their fault and everything they were proposing would make it worse. Only Cathy Casey actually gave a shit. The rest couldn’t have cared less.
Yep. I drive my kid to daycare because it’s on a busy road with shit cycle access. I don’t even cycle along there myself (I detour through back roads) unless it’s ridiculously early with empty roads.
I’m required to drive because it’s only set up for driving. And there are of course lots of parks, encouraging me to do so (but no room for a proper cycle lane).
If I use my sister as an example, my niece plays netball, she has to drive, it’s too far to walk and there are no buses which will get them where they want to go when they need to be there, when they get there parking is always an issue. IMO if you force people out of cars and onto public transport a lot of people will simply pull their kids from activities because it becomes too much of a challenge to get them there.
If they are fit and healthy why is cycling not an option?
Of course, I know why. Because parking is being prioritied over the separated cycle infrastructure that would encourage that.
On street space being used for parking has to also be assessed as a lost opportunity. That space could be used for something so much more useful than storing proviate property that sits unused for 95% of the time.
Lots of other cities have taken this approach and the world hasn’t come to an end. I am sure people thought the world would end transport wise when the trams were removed. Things will change and people will find ays to kep getting around.
middle of winter in the wind and rain, ha that’s not going to happen with my sister or the majority of people. Also they play in several locations, not just the main one.
Masterchef it is AT’s job to provide parking at the park and rides, they clearly don’t provide enough and they are supposed to provide more, but they simply don’t want to do their job. Since they are un-elected there isn’t a damned thing anyone can do. When they set up AT as a separate entity, the government and Mark Ford either didn’t understand that transport always has a political component. Either that or they just didn’t care. Now AT can do anything they like and not give a rat’s arse about the result.
Park and Ride is a very inefficient use of space around transit hubs. It is suitable only for the further extremes of a rapid transit line where land is cheaper. It is far better to “feed” the rapid transit by smaller buses, and to provide good drop off (kiss and ride) places. Using public land as all day car storage is very expensive.
They should at for now at least charge for the P&R parking. Those that need to drive from afar etc could actually find a park at reasonable hours & the locals could walk, cycle or catch feeder buses to them. They could use the new standard machines they have or are continuing to install everywhere. Pay by Plate. https://at.govt.nz/driving-parking/paying-for-parking/pay-by-plate-parking/
Regular commuters could jump on their train/bus if just in time and enter the area details via the AT Park app. Other ways to pay are via credit/debit card and normally coins.
Why is it inefficient, build multi story park and rides and reduce the footprint, I travel a lot in the UK, there are park and rides at many train stations which are well utilised by the public, a lot of these park and rides are multistory.
IMO the problem with Auckland is simply not enough people to provide the frequency of public transport to make public transport a viable alternative to private transport. Which leads to a catch 22 situation because Auckland doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a larger population.
It’s only catch 22 because they keep wasting too much money on large P&R’s & don’t charge for the parking. Plus the extra space gained (even if some P&R’s are just reduced in size) can be sold and developments built where they can recoup a pile of money.
P&R is really inefficient. Look at Silverdale where no matter how much they expand it, keeps filling.
Results in heavy congestion blocking the feeder buses which 90% of parkers could have caught there.
Need to charge for parking so it’s only used by people who really need it.
“…it is AT’s job to provide parking at the park and rides.”
Is it though? I’d prefer they focus on better access. That would be PnR in some places, and walking, cycling and feeder bus amenity at all others.
Far more effective.
I don’t know what the legal advice AT got was, but it’s clearly the same as what Tauranga City Council got. The difference is that the latter said if we need signs, so be it, and festooned the inner suburbs with signs and proceeded to ticket violators.
AT chooses not to enforce the law, both because the senior management doesn’t want to, and because the majority of councillors, particularly the mayor, aren’t interested. It’s purely political choices.
There’s certainly pressure from the automotive industry to resist Healthy, Safe Streets, which are a huge threat to them. A compact, walkable city without car domination would see significant modeshift from driving and from car ownership. This is an enormous threat to their business.
VW has acknowledged this threat and announced they are moving into micromobility.
Others in the industry just spread misinformation instead.
Ye, I note the AA was quoted about people being able to park on berms. Like my local Facebook posts on the topic, people seem to have some idea that they would like to park on “their” berms. The reality is that if there is no restriction – there is no restriction. Unless your car is on “your” berm anyone will be able to park there. You are just as likely to get the chap from up the road, comng back from a party at 2am and slamming the car doors, or the tradie with the heavy vehicle ripping up the grass and leaving mud all over your driveway. The AA wittered on about extra parking for friends and family coming for a barbeque – totally dishonest and unrealistic in most circumstances.
Council hasn’t helped much with this misunderstanding about who owns the public realm. The residential parking schemes were the worst way to solve parking issues. Council and AT needed to retain full powers to reallocate road space as required by the residents of the city and instead they gave their powers away to property owners.
Making policy based on submissions in response to and advertisement is rubbish, because you have no way of knowing how biased your sample is.
If you want to know what the whole community thinks about an issue (as opposed to the people who happen to be most invested in it), you have to do a proper survey of a random sample of the population. There is no other way.
That a straw man argument Heidi, the automotive industry isn’t concerned about kiwis parking where they shouldn’t park, they don’t even care much about NZ either, more cars are sold in China everyday than in 12 months in NZ. We stop selling cars in NZ tomorrow and they would barely notice.
My issue is, living in Kingsland close to the 1st “1 stage” PT stop into town, is that we have become a de-facto park and ride. Our streets are narrow (parking on only one side) and this all creates problems.
On top of that, things get worse when events are on at Eden Park. Though we are much closer to the park than many on the south side of New North Road (and have all the Kingsland venues), we have no resident parking so event days become a nightmare.
Whatever happens, AT needs to put in an enforced, equitable, consistent policy framework.
I agree that AT needs this, and it needs to be grounded in the GPS and the Auckland Plan, especially their objectives of modeshift, safety and carbon reduction.
(I’m hoping you realise that the hide and ride and the event parking and traffic problems around Kingsland are problems of safety for children and other vulnerable road users, and problems of car dependency and carbon emissions. Some people seem to think they are problems of not being to find a park.)
Maybe the ‘equitable’ solution is to make sure the people who are currently driving into Kingsland and parking have the same level of access to public transport that the people of Kingsland apparently enjoy?
… and allowing people to live there.
Most nearby meshblocks in 2013 had a population density of zero.
(± 5000 ppl/km². That is not too much of an error margin for a metro station this close to the city centre)
AT were supposed to be doing a residential parking scheme around Eden Terrace and the nothern part of Kingsland. It was supposed to have been implemented this month. As usual – AT has just abandoned any sort of information about what is happeming with it.
Why should there be residential parking schemes at all?
If you need a parking space for your car, pay for a private one on your private land. Don’t expect everyone else to subsidise it by handing over public space.
Freemans Bay is medium density, with a lot of houses not having off street parks, and there has been a reduction of on street parks on Franklin Road. Whilst I have reservations on the fairness of a residents parking scheme the outcomes have been good. Prior to the residential parking scheme from Monday to Friday there were no available parks 6am to 6 30pm. No problem though outside these hours. Now parking is almost always readily available 24/7 but limited to P120 without a permit 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday. What has disappeared are the commuters parking all day for free. Presumably a good proportion are now travelling by public transport.
Really a variation of the case of if you remove destination car parks a lot of car journeys just evaporate.
None of that answers why there should be a scheme at all.
It seems to me the good outcome is because commuter parkers are charged and residents are not. But not sure who that is good for, certainly not the local ratepayer.
Its public space. If one pays, all pays.
In reply to KLK commuters are not being charged, residents using parking permits are, but they getting an absolute bargain. Commuters are only being constrained by the P120 limit. As long as providing parking is not at the expense of other more benificial road corridor space, and that certainly does not include providing additional general traffic lanes, I don’t see a problem. Increasing the costs of a residents parking permit may raise more money but I do not think it will change any behaviours. Most residents cars I observe are stationary during the week.
Maybe have a look at what else can be done with the space, Don. Eg https://twitter.com/hyper_linda/status/1147058243463733248?s=19
It’s not just about money and getting people onto public transport, and whether it works out ok for people needing a park… it’s about life, and reversing the damage.
Heidi, Freemans Bay has got a long long way to go before it becomes like inner city Oslo. Whilst over half the dwellings are already apartments, largely on ex industrial and commercial sites, the bulk of the land is still taken up by detatched single houses with no discernable rebuilding, or even an identifiable transition path into high density residential. It will get there eventually, but in the mean time apart from more cycle ways, traffic calming and lower speed limits the required roadway changes are modest compared to what is needed in other areas.
what happened in Oslo is a real mess, the recently elected lefty green council removed carparks, reduced vehicle access into the city, added more tolls and then the stupidest thing of all the significantly increased the cost of public transport, they put it up so much it’s still viable to drive and if you own an electric car it’s a no brained it’s cheaper to drive than use public transport, plus you get to use the bus lanes, and don’t pay for the tolls.
Don, I hope you can see the irony. While most people are arguing that Auckland’s public realm is dominated by parked and moving cars because of intensification, you have argued that Auckland’s public realm needs to remain dominated by parked and moving cars because it is not intensified enough.
Neither is true. In fact, parking management is called a “leading action” – adjust supply and it adjusts the use of the public realm as well as vkt.
There’s nothing magical about Freeman’s Bay to mean it should not be like an inner city suburb of any well designed city – walkable, great to cycle, great PT connections and a public space not dominated by cars.
The only reason stopping this is many residents are treating the suburb like an outer suburb and want just as much car amenity.
I have several friends in the area and am sick of cars making the footpath unnavigable.
It’s revealing when Freeman’s Bay residents prefer the Bridgeway over the Academy “cause it’s easier to get to”.
Heidi, people parking on or encroaching on footpaths, or doing drop offs on cycleways annoy the hell out of me. A unique attraction of Freemans Bay, is that so much is accessible by foot, or frequent public transport. The CBD is within the magical 30 minute commute by foot! My experience is therefore residents cars are largely idle and bone idle.
In our case we have a car because one, we can afford it, and two it is a huge amount more convenient for some things then alternatives.
Swapping lpg bottles using public transport, or a taxi is a no no.
That said its outings are few and far between, the last refuel was late Feburary!
But Freemans Bay is what it is, with the majority of it’s houses predating mass motoring, so therefore they have limited on site car storage. Apart from former commercial and industrial sites land use intensification is proceeding only very slowly even in areas zoned for heavy intensification. This is largely because of the difficulty of aggregating to the larger sites needed. Most resident families do have a car, and individual younger flatmates in houses a car each. But for all residents a prime attraction in Freemans Bay is a freedom from absolute car dependence.
It is not about our cars. It is about the hide and riders that park in the street all day. This means that nobody in the street can have deliveries, or visitors, or someone coming to fix the dishwasher without having them park over someone’s driveway. There is parking only on one side of the street. All we want is for some parts of the street to have a P120 so that there is some chance of some visitor parking.
I want to repeat KLK’s question: Why should there be residential parking schemes at all?
Just introduce some P120 bays.
Because then the other no time limit parks would surely be all used by commuters. I think you do have to be pragmatic about some of these issues when other parts of Auckland the residents still can park on the street for free all day and these inner suburb residents probably could before no problem. They should phase in charging for these permits though. I guess just applying for them etc is a cost to the applicant really.
There is a charge for residential permits to recover admin costs. Whether it should be higher to reflect adjacent land values is a complete new debate, that would bring up matters as to whether vehicle crossings should also incur an annual charge as they also sterilise road corridor space.
I’ll ask the question again, just in a different way:
Two people want to store their privately owned goods on the same public space in the same street. One is charged a nominal fee. One is charged much more, something approaching the market rate.
Why is that and is that reason justified?
P.S. I am asking the question in the context of residential schemes where both parties pay a fee – residential or hourly rate.
KLK, I am not sure that the situation you are talking about exists anywhere. The bulk of freemans Bay has free but time limited on Monday to Friday parking. Residents can buy a permit to get an exemption from the time limit. There are now some small new areas of paid parking, as well in the largely commercial area. I do not know their actual operating regime, restrictions, charges and if there is any resident payable exemption.
Sorry, copy of comment here, replied at the bottom of the comments by accident.
Thanks Don, I looked and found the link with details on the scheme, sounds pretty sensible. https://at.govt.nz/driving-parking/parking-permits/residential-parking-zone-permits-coupons/ Yes they could increase the fee & continue to access the day coupons & permits.
@KLK, I think the difference is if you have the assumption that most households currently probably need to own at least one car then they need to put it somewhere. Priority for living there over commuters who likely have a car stored at home and are park & hiding or park and walking to their places of work when they have other better commuter choices like cycling or PT that passes through these places. yes ideally all the households in these inner suburbs could be car free, but I think we are not at that stage of development.
I just noticed this too: “New housing developments
New developments and homes built after the notification of the Auckland Unitary Plan (30 September 2013) are not eligible for parking permits.
This is to protect the sustainability of the parking schemes and stop developers passing on the costs of providing parking to ratepayers. Developers and new home builders have a responsibility to ensure they have sufficient off-street parking to meet their needs.”
Also interesting the consultation history:
https://at.govt.nz/driving-parking/parking-permits/resident-parking-permits/residential-parking-zones/residential-parking-zone-consultations/
“@KLK, I think the difference is if you have the assumption that most households currently probably need to own at least one car then they need to put it somewhere. ”
Then they should have bought/rented a house in which they had the private space to store that car. Instead, they did so with the expectation that ratepayers would subsidise their lifestyle choice – inner city suburb with limited parking versus suburbia and abundant free parking space.
There is simply no justification for any scheme were residents get preferential treatment – at a cost or otherwise – to anyone else who wants to use the space for the same purpose. None. Further, there should be no obligation to ratepayers to provide free or subsidized public space for some citizens to store private property.
The more you analyse residential parking schemes the stupider they look.
KLK The linear street space required a car park and a vehicle crossing are about the same. Cars parked on the street do have some effect on traffic calming. So unless if eliminating kerbside parking allows a benifit such as a bus lane or cycleway fine, but as a social justice issue nah, too fraught. Equality would then be met by not having extended hours kerbside parking anywhere. This would most severely disadvantage those already disadvantaged by poor public transport access.
Yes I was going to say some have lived there/in these places for years and sometimes don’t always have as much choice as you may think to move without moving away from family, school & community ties. Also some may be elderly or sick?
It probably all comes back to having perhaps too much heritage protected area which limits the providing of their off-street parking options. See Roeland’s comment below at July 9, 2019 at 2:31 pm
For residents that have been there for an extended period, then plenty of notice can be given as to phasing out. Unless you are condoning the subsidization, in perpetuity? As for elderly and disabled, much like private parking buildings, special amenity can be provided for the physically impaired. The exception to the rule, with the relevant permits.
Neither of the above avoids the need to stop any new residential permits being issued for new residents or new vehicles. Just stop in now.
I agree cars parked parallel are traffic calming. I don’t agree that residents should be paid to provide that (by subsidizing their parking) when others are prepared to pay the market rate for the privilege.
Thanks KLK. Also, Don, the linear street requirements of a parked car may be similar to a vehicle crossing but the space requirements are not. These streets need wider footpaths and children can’t see over the parked cars.
Grant, we certainly are at the stage of development that households can be car free. Subsidy is preventing it being more widespread. This is not Outer Suburbia. This area has car share as well as PT. People are embracing car free lifestyles in far less connected suburbs. This area simply has a lot of people wealthy enough to have let that cloud their perceptions of possible lifestyles in a suburb privileged to have an inner city location restrained from intensification. Let’s not allow what has been determine what will be when our kids need us to take action.
Yes points taken KLK & Heidi. The tools now are in place whereby the permit price can be increased & parking can be removed to bring about change over time. Perhaps Don could use City Hop for their vehicle & save some $ at the same time?
My observation of Freemans Bay over the last twenty years is that cars per household has been decreasing, with a discernable reduction in on street parking. E bikes and scooter uptake is high, not sure about City Hop uptake, but you are right, it would have been more financially prudent then buying our last car but at least having the car constrains filling the carport up with more stuff of dubious value. Our reason for buying here twenty years ago was we valued highly walkability and a 70s terrace house here was the same price as a similar sized detached villa on a cross lease section in Pt Chev. Although changes seem slow at the time Freemans Bay has changed a lot. There was still an operational bulk edible oil and tallow tank farm on College Hill Road.
Personally I think it a total farce that streets far and wide around Eden Park become the forbidden zone. I really feel for both residents and businesses.
That the once in a blue moon time when something happens at Eden Park the draws a crowd seems to matter not to justify the mass street closures.
LKL – have been here for 38 years – and I provide 3 or 4 car parking spaces, enough for me and my tenants. I am lucky, I have the room. Many of the houses in my street have 1 or at the most 2 car parking space as the sites are small – abour 336m2 with 12m frontages. Some have no parking at all because of the gradient of the berm. We are not asking for exclusive use of the on-street parking, just the ability to have visitors or tradies without obstructing the neighbours. We would be happy with some P120s for that purpose. The trouble is that AT refuses to do that. Their only option is P120 for the whole street during business hours, with the ability of residents to purchase exemptions to allow them to park on the street during the day if they require to.
The arrangement you are seeking is what did exist in Freemans bay prior to adoption of the Residents Parking Scheme. The prior arrangement didn’t really work. The P120 spots required a lot of enforcement to ensure they worked as intended, as commuters would just use them as overflow, if no other parks were available. Now commuters know there are no legal, all day parks, to be had, and have modified their commute accordingly. Like you, we have sufficient off street parking, one park and therefore we have not purchased any resident permit, and of the allocated annual daily visitor parks we have used about 4 in a year. Great for tradies and house guests from out of town. What is really nice under the new scheme, is to be able to move the car out of the carport to get the ladder out, and always get a close by park, this was not always possible before.
And for visitors dropping by to be able to secure a park.
Concrete over the berms and turn them into cycle lanes. On Buckland road and Papatoetoe station road cycle lanes on the road there are 3 bikes on the footpaths for every bike on the cycle lane. So cars park on the berms whereas they used to park on the road before the cycle lanes were installed. But its not to bad at the moment as its a bit muddy. People like riding their bikes on the footpaths because its smooth concrete while the roadside cycle lanes are rough tar seal. And its not just kids even adults use the foot path. I blame the knobbly tyres on that come on cheap bikes. The latest craze around here is to concrete over as much of your section as you can get away with so you can park your cars off road because the cycle lane means you can’t park on the road. This increases the problem with drainage. I don’t know why they don’t use paving blocks which allows drainage to seep through. The whole thing is a mess really. Everything they change comes back at them.
Yep there is a downside to the proliferation of cycle lanes, which we all endorse, and this is it. People have cars and need to park them and all the “mode shifting” in the world won’t alter that truth, which must surely have been considered during the planning for more painted stripes in green and broken yellow.
What I want to know is why ancient cars arrive here in shiploads essentially tariff-free, and why we dedicate an enormous amount of our waterfront space to welcoming more of them in. You want to reduce cars on the road? Stop importing so many. Ease the pressure on roads and berms.
But it does. Cars are expensive high maintenance items. If you sort out bicycle access many people in central areas will be able to own less cars than they currently do.
That all depends on how old your car is, neither of my cars cost me much in the way of maintenance, and if you own an electric car there is almost no maintenance.
“People have cars and need to park them” – they need to learn to do this on private land not public.
No, being able to move around the city and live a life is, whether you like it or not, a public good. It’s what people live together in conurbations to achieve, and what they pay taxes and rates for. The balance is what’s at issue here, and the laws of unintended, or gratuitously intended, consequences – eliminate all roadside parking and stopping areas with no regard or provision for alternative, convenient access, and people will simply ignore the rules. Try to prevent that, and you have a surveillance state run by AT. Which I hear advocated here all the time – we need cameras everywhere.
What makes you think that taxes and rates should pay for car parks when they don’t pay for other basic necessities like food or housing or electricity?
Auckland already provides plenty of public parking. But there isn’t an infinite amount of land to commit to the growing numbers of cars, so if you want to be guaranteed a car park, you need to go private not berm.
When the council supports intensification, thus removing off street parking?
Intensification brings more transport freedom and choice, Christopher, and lowers carbon emissions. It may not seem like that to people who want to keep driving, of course. Change is hard, but just because drivers have had the lions’ share of road space and funding spent on them doesn’t mean they have any rights to it remaining like that.
Actually freedom and choice tend to be absent from most intensification projects. Firstly because it only works if you remove the possibility of houses on the edge of the city. So your freedom to choose suburbia over the areas permitted by the planners is curtailed. Secondly intensification squeezes more people into an area to compete for the same resources like parking or schools. Thirdly it requires parking policies to be turned around. Instead of developers having to address the effects of their development they are constrained to provide insufficient parking making no. 2 worse. Housing Choice is one the the propaganda terms used by those pushing for intensification by which they mean reducing choice. Similarly Access for Everyone really means reduced access for most.
Stalinists were particularly good at intensification and extremely good at writing bullshit to promote their policies. These days central planning is pushed by the green movement but it hasn’t really changed much.
Rot. There’s no choice when children aren’t independently mobile.
I have never read a planning objective or goal that requires everything to be designed so small children can wander around on their own. I have read plenty about providing homes and jobs for people. We have a housing crisis caused by so-called growth management and a direct result of that is more people having to share houses with each other. That means more parking is needed not less.
The main alternative here is not that more people will use the bus. The alternative is more people will leave Auckland for other places.
You’ve just not been looking, miffy. One of the six strategic functions of streets given in the Roads and Streets Framework is “Living”, with a desired outcome that streets be:
Places for children to play and focal points for communities to interact.
And it states:
Streets are essential public spaces and access corridors that enable people to meet, help businesses grow and allow children to play, among other things.
You will find planning objectives in the Auckland Unitary Plan. You will find the usual BS in other documents. It is easy to confuse the two.
Miffy, with regard to access for everyone… car drivers are the minority in the access for everyone area. So even if you are crying poor for the drivers you’ll have to acknowledge they are not ‘most’. Public transport users and people on foot are ‘most’ in the city centre.
Surely even you can admire the Stalinistic language of reducing access while calling it access for everyone. I mean it is amusing.
Man oh man. It is increasing access. Except for metal boxes.
There’s intensification and there’s intensification.
Mass housing development is happening all around Auckland unfortunately many have poor alternatives to private transport that is neccessary given their locations.
It will be interesting to see what happens to all those cars with nowhere to park in such areas. It bad enough around similarly thought out places.
“Man oh man. It is increasing access.” In the same way collectivisation increased food production.
I became independently mobile when at 15 I bought my first car for $500 Heidi.
It certainly will be an increase in access, if my bus and the three behind it aren’t stuck for three cycles of the lights behind a half dozen left turning cars.
It will be an increase when I can cross Shortland street without waiting minutes for a gap in the dribble of lost souls who insist on speeding down the hill only to slam on the brakes and honk at another lost soul trying to manoeuvre sideways into High Street from the opposite direction.
Hell, it will be an increase in access if I can just drive straight from the motorway ramp to the parking building without encountering a morass of dim witted provincials intent on turning right from Victoria on to Queen to circle the block looking for a street park that doesn’t exist.
I think Miffy lost that argument.
“so small children can wander around on their own”
That is an important and much underappreciated feature of cities. Ever watched Stranger Things? Note how the boys roam around on their bicycles. How many kids do you know today who have that kind of freedom?
* and sure, that is in the suburbs. Being able to live with kids in a city has disappeared from collective memory. With the small space inside many apartments, and the lack of a garden, it is an even more important feature for apartment dwellers.
This reduced access is a fact for most people in Auckland, but is is a solvable problem. When I was living in that apartment in the CBD I had access to a lot of things on foot. With some basic investment in PT I would have had access to many more things with a short bus trip. Often with less fuss than driving a car around in a suburb.
But yeah that brings us back to those ‘numpties’ in charge of planning. The area where you can get this level of access without cars is the central suburbs and the city centre. The former is still mostly under that heritage zone. The residential parts of the latter is mostly a car dominated wasteland. Oops.
I can assure you that it is a PITA for parents if kids have no possibility to get around by themselves.
@roeland, Stranger Things is set in the summer of 1985, I did the same when I was a kid roamed around on my bike, however kids today don’t roam around on there bikes and it’s got nothing to do with traffic and transport options, children today do different things than kids did when I was a teenager, or when Stranger Things was set.
Provide some evidence please, Masterchief, that kids not roaming on their bikes has nothing to do with traffic.
Why don’t you provide evidence that traffic is what’s stopping kids roaming around Heidi.
My kids have the freedom to roam around as much as they like, they simply choose not too, despite my best efforts, there friends aren’t much different, children today are far more sedentary than children in previous generations, there’s far more things to keep them inside than there have ever been in the past.
This is an interesting study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5551109/
“I became independently mobile when at 15 I bought my first car for $500 Heidi.” – and some of us recognize that having no independent mobility was due a failure of society, and are trying to improve things for today’s and tomorrow’s children. That you are satisfied with how things are is irrelevant to the needs of children who are not satisfied.
I have already blogged about the damage this is doing to children and about the research showing that traffic danger is indeed a major cause of loss of independent mobility.
There is nothing in the research you have linked that conflicts with the wide body of research showing that traffic danger is a cause. That children consider sitting ‘the norm’ is both cause and effect of the sedentary lifestyle, in an awful loop that must be disrupted. That they don’t have other kids to play with is the result of the street environment not being socially active any more for to being dominated by cars, and a clear indicator that adults who are debating parking solutions need to consider the effects on the children, and not just the effects on driver or resident amenity.
That’s all very well if your private land has the space. In my flat of five people and four cars, only one car fits in the garage so the rest of us have to park on the street (or the “vehicle crossing” if all the street parking is taken up by cafe patrons). We never block the footpath, but I don’t think we should be expected to park several blocks away because of the arbitrary enforcement of some bylaw.
Surely you would have been aware of the fact the flat only provided one carpark before taking up the lease. There is no given right to storing cars on the street. Would you store your personal possessions in a shipping container on the street if the flat didn’t have enough room for them?
One could argue that is your own fault — if you have only room for one car the people in your flat can only own one car. The fact that you can park the other 3 on the street is an anomaly.
Maybe that means you have to rent the entire house by yourself without flatmates.
And that is how you figure out that parking cars is in fact quite expensive.
‘Would you store your personal possessions in a shipping container on the street if the flat didn’t have enough room for them?’
Nail on the head.
Well, based on what the five of us could afford / what was available that month in 2016 on the Auckland Isthmus, that’s what we ended up with. Our previous place was rural and had enough space for dozens of cars but we got sick of the commute. Beggars can’t be choosers.
I personally agree with the sentiment of this post – parking on berms is ridiculous, no one should need to park their private cars on public streets. But out here in the real world, some people need to keep cars where they can afford to.
Yeah, there’s not much choice. That’s very true. I suspect a programme to help people in your situation (who are interested) to rationalise the number of cars might be worthwhile. There might be other options.
“But out here in the real world, some people need to keep cars where they can afford to.”
So the amount you can afford is…..$0? You rented what you could afford and when you found you needed excess space for the car, you want to skip that cost? You want the cost of your lifestyle – a place on the Isthmus with dedicated carparking – to be subsidized.
Instead, you should have found somewhere where you could afford private off street parking (or where it was not in demand such that you needed a dedicated space), or sold the car(s).
People in NZ whinge about the cost of household welfare. They should add parking welfare to the list.
and all the aholes park on yellow lines and cycle lane with hazards on thinking it’s a park anywhere button.
Steve do you live near Paradise Restaurant in Sandringham per chance?
The behaviour is rife and its going to be deadly behaviour one day when someone finally steps out onto crossing and a driver fails to spot because the view is blocked.
Had a minor minor set-to with Cr Cathy Casey who posted something about parking on berms on the local Sandringham group on FB. Was politely told to focus her priorities on real issues and to not try and make the clogged roads worse by penalising people for keeping streets free for emergency services etc etc
We were ticketed by the council years ago for this at 3am in the morning. The council that we fund actually employed people to go around in the middle of the night and ticket cars that were making the roads usable…..
No Mark, I have been there and I agree it’s so crowded and busy now with 2 crossings. But I have seen that sort of behavior many places around Auckland.
“Yellow line? Foot path? Cycle/bus lane? Park with hazards on! F the road code, my convenience is more important! There is no instantaneous punishment anyway…weeeee~~”
The cure for that congestion in Sandringham is lights at the 2 crossings. If the traffic continued to flow until someone pushed the cross button, and waited a few seconds, you would have more people crossing at the same time, rather than randomly wandering across.
And those ahole Sunday cyclists with a perfectly good and expensively provisioned cycle lane who insist on their divine right to cycle on the road at 15 km/h in zones where double yellow lines forbid overtaking them with safe clearance. Yeah I know that’s swearing in church, but hey… with roadside stopping zones essentially absent, the city is becoming full of ahole drivers who need to answer a phone call or drop someone somewhere. The answer? Ban the private car, period. Make ’em walk. Or take trains we haven’t built yet. Works great in Pyongyang, City of The Future.
Would it really be that bad to slow down and pass them when safe? Its hardly a ban on the private car.
I’m picking that the “expensively provisioned cycle lane” is not that great if people are choosing to ride on the road.
I’m watching the amazing transformation of Quay St with interest. With the simultaneous strangulation of Customs St due to incessant construction, the hyper-chicane of Victoria St and the virtual elimination of cars from lower Wellesley St E, only Queen St and the reopened Wyndham St get you easily from Britomart to Ponsonby. And that’s not what anyone really wants to happen.
And yet the number ofmpoeple coming into the cuty centre keeps going up. So where is the harm?
People who think travelling by car is the only option just won’t come to the CBD. Just like people like me that prefer travelling by bike won’t go to most of Auckland because they are car dominated hell holes.
“And that’s not what anyone really wants to happen.” – Really? Because we have had three elections where Aucklanders voted in a mayor and many councillors who ran on a platform of doing this.
Could you catch the green bus?
Auckland is returning to the norm, which is a city centre which isn’t completely optimized for driving through it.
Have you watched:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxdAH9pFsew&w=560&h=315%5D
I used to think that too. It turns out that It is NOT illegal to cross over yellow lines when passing a cyclist.
Really? Is a cycle a special type of vehicle that can be passed? Or are you being sarcastic?
No, he’s not being sarcastic. The road code says, “You must not pass another motor vehicle if it means you have to cross over a no-passing line on your side of the centre line.” You can pass a person on a bike (or on a horse, or with a gaggle of geese).
Is my e-bike considered a motor vehicle?
Good question. I’m not sure where the line would be drawn.
NZTA is also part of the problem here.
They have in particular, gone back and forth over the last decade about rules on whether mobility scooters are able to use footpaths or not. And have in the process confused the councils completely as to what the rules are or are not.
I guess the issue NZTA “faced” is when does for example when does a “sit in” motorised wheelchair (such as a person with tetraplegia or partial stroke would have to use to get around), become a “sit on” chair aka a mobility scooter simply used by someone as a way to go shopping (for example).
The use cases are similar, the underlying rationale for allowing one versus the other on footpaths, not so obvious.
There are mobility scooters around now that look exactly like miniature vehicles, with headlights, indicators, enclosed sides/doors on them, that look at first glance exactly like a small Japanese Kei class van. And they can hoof it on the footpaths.
But seems they’re treated as “mobility” scooters, not road vehicles, so don’t need licensing, checks or licensed drivers. The only practical difference seems to be that the scooters use batteries and the van would not.
And they have twisted themselves in knots on that issue.
Which lead to the mixed messages about whether e-scooters can or cannot use the footpath.
Both of which ended with NZTA playing the “they can, because I say so” card to “clarify” both issues. And which for all intents and purposes the argument seems to be that because they don’t have a “engine” that makes them move (only an electric motor), its ok to use footpaths.
Which are little more than NZTA muddying its own waters and rules.
So, given that history, why do we expect AT – which is merely NZTAs little brother who deeply admires its bigger brother, and wants to grow up and become just like him.
To act differently to how they have?
I think the issue is that NZTA needs to clarify the rules properly, get law changes if needed. Then there can be no arguments about unspecified “legal issues”.
Heidi, you are quoting rules, not laws. Infringements can only be issued in accordance with the law, and the law states that signage must be provided.
The irony here is that this blog advocates less car parking, yet now complains about the result of not enough car parking!
There’s also a question of equity. This is one of those issues that won’t be enforced evenly. In small town NZ the police don’t issue fines for things like parking on footpaths. In fact in very small locales where there’s a sole police officer, most road related infringements are not enforced, including not having a WOF/Rego. This is because it’s critical that the officer remain in good standing with the community he or she is responsible for. Policing becomes dangerous if the community turns against you.
Your last point is a good one, Geoff. It reminds me of the overt policies that some Vision Zero cities have adopted to ensure there is no racial profiling. In effect this means that speed cameras and red light cameras, etc, are used rather than having enforcement be reliant on an officer’s subjective decision.
The regional situation is very different to the urban situation. As I made clear, I am talking about the situation for urban streetscapes. On rural roads without kerbs, the strip of land beside the roadway – although covered in grass – is generally engineered to be able to take vehicles. That’s the commonly understood “road margin”. Our grass verges retained by kerbstones are quite different. Not engineered for vehicles, and often over services.
If I’ve misused some terms, I’m sure Council will get it right as they (hopefully) pursue this issue until is resolved.
Signage may be required if AT implement a new bylaw. They would only have to do that if the existing rules aren’t sufficient, but they are. AT can (and currently do, but only if responding to a complaint) ticket a car parked on a paved footpath, without requiring signage. It’s the same situation for the unpaved part of the footpath. No signage is required.
Unfortunately the misinformation AT has been spreading has muddied everyone’s understanding about this.
I think you still fail to understand that Vision Zero was implemented in Sweden to improve there state highway network. But you don’t want the highway network improved, at least not how they did it in Sweden.
Well, I don’t see lots of motorways north of Stockholm there. Lots of rural roads look quite similar to ours. Could it be that they figured out you should not drive 110km/h on such roads?
In Sweden if the highway isn’t divided it’s 100kph like NZ, if it’s divided it’s either 110 or 120, depending on the road. There’s quite a lot of divided highway in Sweden, about 2000km.
One question ( I lied it turned into three). Is there a problem with people parking on some grass? Sure it isn’t good if you want pristine turf, but is there really a problem if people find somewhere to park and use the scrappy bit of space that nobody had any other use for? Is there some major safety issue that isn’t showing up in the statistics? My guess is it is probably safer to park there than in a private driveway where a kid might be playing.
Yeah, I was going to post first about establishing the answers to exactly these questions, miffy. The answer is yes. And I think you would agree once you’ve thought through the affect it’s having on our children.
Also you need to drive on where pedestrians walk to park there… And there are SUV ‘s that take a huge chunk of the footpath… then there is the minimum distance rule from driveways and intersections…
If you can get a crane, and place it a metre or so away from driveways, you have my support 🙂
So it is ok to have pedestrians and cars use the same space in Elliot St and O’Connell street but nowhere else? If you look at the crash statistics you will see driveways are far more dangerous for kids than berms and footpaths. If we were going to use Vision Zero we would ban driveways and insist people park on berms.
Or on the roadway. I’ve often wondered about that. If we’d never allowed vehicle crossings in an urban setting… So the footpath and cyclepath wouldn’t have the hazard of cars coming out of driveways, and would have a long more intact verge between there and the roadway, punctuated just by pram crossings.
But we have what we have. And if people choose to drive cars, they have to ensure they don’t take over any more of the public realm than is legal. The legal allocation of road space to driving is already way too much.
Surely you are not saying that if the law says something then it must be right?
Likewise would there be any real harm in me building a small dwelling on some public land that I didn’t think anyone was using?
I was appalled to see the very one-sided piece on parking on berms on Seven Sharp last week. They reached the conclusion that it was fine to park on berms and that AT were just being officious a*holes for suggesting otherwise – even though it’s clear that AT aren’t actually enforcing this.
What we need to inject into this discussion is that the reasons for keeping berms and footpaths clear of vehicles actually have some logic to them. The safety and convenience of pedestrians must be paramount (and as a serious pedestrian all over the city this affects me in a big way). But also there’s the issue of the damage that vehicles do to berms, especially when they get softer in winter. Who pays for repairing them? Not the vehicle owner, but the ratepayers, you and I.
And then there’s the question of services. How many of us know exactly what services run where in the space outside our front fences? How many of us know whether the services outside our properties are ancient and close to the surface and therefore vulnerable to damage? I certainly don’t. And I also resent that when these are damaged, the cost of relaying drains and water pipes etc falls on the ratepayer, not the person who does the damage.
I sat in the back of a car last year when a colleague did their practical for drivers license.
Said colleague turned left out of the VTNZ and clipped the curb with back left wheel.
Instant fail.
Maybe parking on the verge should be thought of like that.
David
Both excellent points.
For an example of extreme damage to berms look no further than the park and ride at Albany.
I hear the response already – not enough car parks. I think what people are really saying is not enough free car parks. I am sure that with a pricing policy in place at park and rides there would suddenly be way less demand.
And the PnR parkers amount to what was it, 5% of passengers boarding at Albany? What a waste of resources it would be to build them more parking.
Better to spend that money on separated cycle paths or feeder buses so people have real options.
Surely we should be starting the journey to modern enforcement. Camera’s and 5G should start making fixed enforcement cameras for initially problem areas, then further afield. For those crying Nanny state etc there would be potential to bring in a strike system, if you are caught twice a small fine issued that ramps up the more you are infringed.
Same principle albeit less leniency and bigger fines should apply to red light runners
It is ironic that those crying “nanny state” are usually the ones making it necessary.
We’d probably have a three strike policy if it was teenagers doing this antisocial behaviour.
I seriously do not want 1984 taken out of the fiction section. Mass surveillance has a very ugly side to it as well. Just imagine being followed by the state from the moment you leave your front doorstep to wherever. And no it is not a reality at the moment. Because unless you are some kind of divine being Joe, you may just trip up one day and make a mistake and it’s all on harddrive, just waiting to catch you out.
Over course I’d you are a subscriber to the Stasi then I fully get where you are coming from!
Well. I am typing this on a screen with a camera, and various companies are monitoring every transaction I do via this device. It is extraordinary difficult to evade this while still participating in modern society.
That future is already here.
I’m sorry but Google, Facebook etc is no excuse for state surveillance.
Its a vastly different beast from good old state surveillance to watch your every move in public to ensure you follow whatever rules they’ve decided for you.
“to ensure you follow whatever rules they’ve decided for you.”
So we shouldn’t have to follow the rules that are made for us? We should be able to decide which rules to follow?
You should go and live in Romania. You would fit right in. No one follows the rules there and the footpaths are literally unusable because they are covered in cars.
Of course all of this ‘berm’ discussion could be resolved with Heidi’s post a few back which would be, just plant lots of trees!
Question – if the car in the last photo was moved back 3-4 feet so the front bumper is behind the join in the concrete just behind the front wheel (so the back end of the car is out on the road in line with the parked cars), is it illegally parked in that driveway?
No. The vehicle crossing goes from the roadway edge to the property edge. To be legally parked, the car needs to be on the driveway itself, fully within the private property. Or on the roadway well away from the vehicle crossing.
Thanks for asking. 🙂 Lots of people now just don’t even know.
Oops. I mean it would be illegally parked. So the answer is yes.
The rapid advent of capable new battery powered vehicles, mobility scooters, electric cycles, and scooters, has left the basically three previous classifications of road use, pedestrians, unpowered cycles, and motor vehicles obsolete and now increasingly inadequate. Therefore everything based on just those narrow classifications, such as road corridor allocation and current road legislation and bylaws is now also inadequate to cater for the new varieties of personal transport.
It is time to stop tinkering, 20th century rules and structures are no no longer suitable to accomodate these new users of road corridor space. Tinkering has given us adsurd rules dependant on wheel size, not speed and mass of the loaded vehicle. Helmets for big wheels but not for small for example. Different regulations for cycle paths and cycle lanes, ain’t it absurd.
There needs now to be a fundemental reclassification of road corridor vehicles based on their space requirements, user vulnerability and loaded peak speed kinetic energy.
From this road corridor space can be allocated with appropriate rules of access, allowed speeds, mandatory vehicle and operator rules for each allocation of space.
For most roads there would be only two or three space allocations corresponding to existing footpath, cycleway and general roadway.
What I would envisage is that for instance cycles could be allowed on all three of these spaces but severely speed limited on the footpath, 10kph? and say require helmet use to access general roadway space that has a posted speed limit above 50kph.
It is a national problem not a local problem demanding government leadership.
The problems of basing the entire road corridor, design, allocation, provision of, and regulatory environment around narrow 20th Century vehicle classifications are only going to be compounded by delay.
It’s not a drive way, the house it is in front of does not own that land. It’s public land and being as it isn’t road it should be classed as footpath. If it’s their house, just park across the drive on the road, leave the footpath free its really not rocket science.
Joe, you can’t park across the drive on the road. This prevents access from the roadway to the paved part of the footpath for people with little wheels: wheelchairs, scooters, pushchairs, prams, bikes, shopping trundlers. All these road users have a right to not have to try to mount a kerb. Pedestrians, too, if the verge is wet or muddy.
“If it’s their house, just park across the drive on the road,”
It’s also illegal. When we had tradesmen working at our property we parked there only to be ticketed. AT didn’t care that it was our own house, because that is the law.
Why did we not park legally on the road? Our street is filled with cars from 6.45am to about 5:30pm Monday to Friday with commuter parking for Takapuna businesses – commuter parking, not shoppers. Seemingly it doesn’t matter what the AT Parking Strategy says about managing parking, or how often we complain, AT does nothing
What should AT do to remedy this situation JW?
I don’t see what residents have to complain about when it comes to on street parking. A resident has no more right to park somewhere than a commuter/shopper/tourist.
(I live pretty close to you so know exactly what you mean but I don’t see why anyone living there has any more or less rights to park on the street)
AT should be following their strategy to ensure occupancy is around 85% at peak times, meaning there are always parks available, through management and pricing. They’re not doing that, thus some users milk the system. If it was priced, John wouldn’t use it daily, but when he needed to, as in this instance, he could pay for the privilege.
Heidi
you read my mind.
Another excellent post. AT manages parking poorly and so where they can get out of it they should. Divesting one of the city parking buildings for re-development would free up a pile of cash that could be used to promote more carbon friendly modes of travel.
Maybe there should be an immediate focus on active mode share in South Auckland? I don’t profess to be any sort of expert on this subject, but something has to be done there. It was appalling to see the rates of morbid obesity outlined on television tonight. The south seems to be an area that is neglected in many ways and it is blatantly apparent that whatever is being done is insufficient. A sugar tax anyone?
AT selling a parking building might also put upward pressure on parking rates prompting some people to change to public transport. That is of course if Sky City don’t creep along at the bottom of the market as they strive to fill their 3000 spaces.
“Maybe there should be an immediate focus on active mode share in South Auckland?”
A cycleway through Great South Rd can’t come soon enough, but that would probably be done more north of “South Auckland” first.
Increasing bus priority, frequency, span & reducing PT fares of some routes to allow more shift workers to use PT in these areas. More promotion & help to take up HOP cards & cycling all would help. Though I have seen programs/events advertised for all these sort of things (probably more when the new network was rolled out), not sure how successful it is.
Ma,
I am asking that AT enforce policy 1B of their Parking Strategy where demand regularly exceeds 85% of available supply. They are required to implement a “Response” to ensure that there is parking available, so that everyone gets a shot at it.
We could simply choose to park our cars on the road leaving our drive way free for any visitors, but that doesn’t seem a particularly productive response. Note that I don’t have a car, I am referring to my wife and adult son.
I am not asking for free parking. I believe that it is an individual’s responsibility to pay for parking in the same way that they pay for their housing costs and other commodities.
The provision of parking costs this city dearly. You will be aware that the gasometer car park will cost at least $30 million. It will cost a huge amount more in opex, because like Ronwood Avenue it is likely to be a loss maker for years. The gasometer building would not have been necessary if AT had enforced their parking strategy, such as in our street. There is an independent report that states that and an AT spokesperson has said as much in the media.
This is why I think as I do.
I see, good to hear you think it should be priced, I couldn’t agree more. One of the neighbours from the street over was around last night and is always crapping on about residents parking but I’m sure she wants free residents parking for the privileged few. (drives me nuts)
Don’t get me started on the gasometer park, I walked the kids to school past it the other day and was muttering to them what an abomination it was.
The logical answer, which does not conform to the ideals of this group, is to remove the berms and extend the width of the carriageway.
I’m not sure reducing the permeable surface is a wise idea, all that will achieve is greater expenditure on stormwater.
It also makes it impossible, or at least much more expensive and invasive, to install or maintain services. The berm is where all your pipes, drains and power are.
Yes, and some of them are very shallow laid. In the older parts of the city, the stormwater from roofs often drains to the kerb through a very shallowly laid pipe. Heavy vehicles parked on the berm can crush the pipes.
Are you after a complete move to socialism where the state provides free carparks / houses / food / electricity / etc to all, or is it just carparks that the state should provide for free (which doesn’t seem that logical to me)?
Since you are so stupid as to ask: yes
Speaking of “Socialism” and putting aside how it is used incorrectly to just be anything Labour might be thinking of at the time….
It would be interesting to see the correlation between the voting habits in some of these inner city areas with parking schemes, how many of those voters call the current government socialist, but also insist on the council providing state-funded free carparks..
We’re not taxed enough to be a socialist country. The tax burden in Nordic model countries is significantly higher than in NZ, the upside is citizens get better services from the govts.
Absolutely. And the government does not control the means of production.
So the upshot? Those claiming socialism not only do not know what they are talking about, but are probably insisting on a subsidy for themselves, in some capacity, without even realizing.
“The tax burden in Nordic model countries is significantly higher than in NZ, the upside is citizens get better services from the govts.”
It would be interesting to see how this would take in NZ, if you could fairly show the pros and cons in advance.
I know someone who moved to Finland and was horrified at the tax burden. That was until they experienced the benefits, particularly the guy that rocked up every morning in the depths of winter to shovel snow off their footpath. That, and everybody seeming relatively happy, seems to have swayed their thinking.
Where do you put happiness in the spreadsheet to work out GDP?
Which is what happens when the world is run by neoliberal accountants.
“That advice is either wrong or based on such a limited instruction that it has missed the most crucial points, or AT are misinterpreting it.” Please don’t quote out of context.
The question you should be asking is why they have refused to release the legal opinion on the basis that it’s not in the public interest for it to be released, when it clearly is.
Regarding density, refer last Thursday’s Good Density post. You’re holding onto some myths there. Look at the vkt of a sprawling city and of a dense city and then think it through.
Apartment dwellers have the least cars per resident and drive the least.
Have any of you been to Europe? → well… have you? For starters, in many European cities verges aren’t a thing.
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.877623,4.7103768,3a,75y,298.19h,91.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sN4PnM2HgX00WiWiQn4AYjA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Maybe it depends on where exactly you are. Where I studied parking happens in parking bays. And don’t even think about parking on the footpath.
Another example: enforcement of non-stopping lines in London (the double yellow and red) is legendary.
I have been to The UK. Cars are parked on footpaths in every city, town and village. The population is so dense that people have paved their front lawns and turned it into parking.
I’ve been to Italy where cars are parked everywhere and half the pavement is taken up with motorbikes and scooters. I have been to Amsterdam where most footpaths are littered with bicycles. Even in Scandinavia I have seen cars parked on verges.
https://goo.gl/maps/smUxQPAkD1v1PJoLA
Progressive cities like Milan have recognised that one of the ways to curb vehicle use is to have less parks at the destination. In the city some on-street car parks have been turned over to bikes, electric bikes and electric car share schemes.
Why can’t Auckland do that from next Monday? Take the onzo bikes and Lime scooters off our footpaths that are rapidly becoming over full and put them in converted car parks.
Our city needs to take climate change seriously because at the moment it is just an embarrassment. When will Auckland achieve peak carbon?
Great post thanks Heidi, things are now more clarified. We have a council painted ute up the road who sets a good example and parks on the berm across from the school. Advertising to all that it’s OK to do. Recent renewal to paths etc meant more yellow lines so a few so this or drive up onto the path to pick or drop people off.
Thanks Grant. Can you snap a picture one day and send it to GA? 🙂
Sure, or link to a pic I put on Twitter perhaps, want licence plate shown?
No, I don’t need the license plate. An example rather than a report. Ta!
Wish I had a camera on me last night, small car parked at the end of a cul de sac exactly at right angles up over curb, path and partially berm. Not such a worry in these quiet dead ends at least.
This is berm on the NW shared path. It’s usually full. In winter it always looks like this. This street is a mess for parking.
https://i.imgur.com/EcrmCdh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9NWQPWO.jpg
Thanks Don, I looked and found the link with details on the scheme, sounds pretty sensible. https://at.govt.nz/driving-parking/parking-permits/residential-parking-zone-permits-coupons/ Yes they could increase the fee & continue to access the day coupons & permits.
@KLK, I think the difference is if you have the assumption that most households currently probably need to own at least one car then they need to put it somewhere. Priority for living there over commuters who likely have a car stored at home and are park & hiding or park and walking to their places of work when they have other better commuter choices like cycling or PT that passes through these places. yes ideally all the households in these inner suburbs could be car free, but I think we are not at that stage of development.
I just noticed this too: “New housing developments
New developments and homes built after the notification of the Auckland Unitary Plan (30 September 2013) are not eligible for parking permits.
This is to protect the sustainability of the parking schemes and stop developers passing on the costs of providing parking to ratepayers. Developers and new home builders have a responsibility to ensure they have sufficient off-street parking to meet their needs.”
Also interesting the consultation history:
https://at.govt.nz/driving-parking/parking-permits/resident-parking-permits/residential-parking-zones/residential-parking-zone-consultations/
Thank you Heidi for his post it’s interesting topic.
Living in Papakura we have always been responsible for the maintenance of our berms which sort of comes from the days of the rural county set up where the land owner was responsible for the weeds etc up to the centre of the “Road Reserve”. this used to annoy me when I was clearing the gorse, thistles, beer bottles and packet rubbish from the road frontage of a farm I worked on. At least we could get a penny for each intact beer bottle in those days. The repair of fencing after a weekend of demolition derbies was particularly galling. When the berm was damaged it made it’s maintenance much harder and this is particularly true of the make good of roadside services which were not well reinstated and left it to the resident to make the berm fit for maintenance.
For the last 6 years I have been trying to encourage the Council to ensure the rubbish bins are not left obstructing the footpath. they inform me that their tare supposed to put the bins down clear of the footpath however that is not happening in the Papakura area and no amount of reporting to
them of the problem seems to be effective in ensuring that the contractors do so or the the residents are aware of the need/instruction for them to place the bin clear of the footpath. This is particularly bad in the winter time when the grass is soggy and those pushing prams or in mobility
scooters are particularly disadvantaged by this habit.
I have a number of options when I come across these lazy inconsiderate jerks:
1. Call AT and get them ticketed
2. Place a ‘don’t tread on our toss’ flyer on their windscreen.
3. Bend a mirror back
4. Walk over top of the car (reserved for special cases)
An AT Transport car was blocking my driveway for 15 minutes today, 26 July 2021.
At approximately 1 30 pm.
The address is: 6 Rautangi Road, Mt Eden 1024, Auckland
I took two photographs for proof, including the license plate.
That was: HMZ 216.
When the driver saw that I was taking photographs he suddenly sped away.
No further commentary.
* I write here as the AT Transport has no way of receiving complains online, so far as I know. It is an impervious fortrress.
go on their website and use their report a problem page https://contact.at.govt.nz/?cid=afef5636-4dba-ea11-a812-000d3a79770c&_gl=1*1sh2eo*_ga*OTY2Mzg1NzgyLjE1OTI1NDE1Mzg.*_ga_WNC2W47P8Y*MTYyNzI2NTg4My4xMzYuMS4xNjI3MjY1ODk2LjA.
At least that way it can be recorded.
Hi Anthony, Please do contact them as Vinny has suggested. And I’d love to hear the outcome. As you say, this is not just about the individual incident. It’s about the difficulty of reporting it.
I have a two house three story high development going up across the road. The trucks park on the footpath. Do I have the right to ask them to park on the road or are they in the right?
The other neighbour has has parking for 1 car in the drive but there are 5 cars ,4 parked in front of other peoples houses. Am I withen my rights when I ask them to park somewhere else as I can’t park in front of our house?
Order some of these yellow feet and politely put them on their windscreens, you can only ask.
https://www.livingstreets.org.nz/node/2182
ps the Grant below is not me.
Auckland Council have no idea, they take rates of Ratepayers however do bugger all else
Some houses in Auckland that have 5 bedroom have 15 people living in the house each have a car and they take up parking spaces in front of 4 nearby homes
Just a bloody joke it’s that sort of stuff that sees people leaving to live in Brisbane and elsewhere
Council needs to do there job by enforcing City ordinances and bylaws so this sort of third world crap doesn’t happen !
No wonder the City and it’s suburbs are starting to look like a central Asian slum !