Has Ballarat got the right approach to parking?

City of Ballarat's Smarter Parking Plan

The City of Ballarat has recently put forward what they're calling the Smarter Parking Plan to address issues with parking in the CBD and the hospital precinct - and it's been quite controversial, as parking plans always are.

Currently there are issues with some parks being time-restricted when people need to use them all day; workers and shoppers over-using parking in residential areas to avoid paying; and so on. The basic idea of the new plan is that:

• the first ten minutes of parking anywhere will be free, so if you're just nipping in quickly you don't get charged
• residents will get permits, so they don't have to pay to park out the front of their own houses
• everywhere else will have no time restrictions, but will be charged an hourly rate

Essentially, they're trying to better manage the existing parking, to ensure that parking is available for those who need it but not over-used by those that don't.

The plan broadly follows the model used in Auckland, which was also controversial initially but ended up quite popular. In my view, the Ballarat plan broadly does what it tries to, but it's definitely worth scrutinising the detail to see how it can be improved.

Zoning

There are a lot of residential streets covered by zones 2 and 3, and this has concerned a lot of the people who live on those streets - with their worry being that workers and shoppers will spill over onto these streets and stop people from being able to park outside their own homes. The truth is that this already happens, just in a mostly-unregulated way - sometimes because people can't find a closer park, sometimes because they'd prefer to walk a short distance than pay for one. By regulating the residential areas around the CBD and hospital precinct, this should hopefully keep that practice to a minimum - cutting down both the number of people that park there, and the length of time they do.

There's a sizeable amount of unrestricted parking right next to the station precinct

If anything, I don't think the zoning extends far enough. There is a noticeable hole in the zoning around the Eastern Oval, but I used to live in that area and the on-street parking was very often taken up by shoppers and other visitors. Under this plan, it'll only be about 180m walk from a Zone 1 space on Mair Street (costing $2 per hour) to an unzoned space on Peel Street North (free) - that's much too sharp a cliff, the costs should ramp down more gradually. This area is close to the railway station as well as shops, so there will be no shortage of demand - it seems likely that if the plan were implemented as-is, there would be a mad rush to get the free parking in this area, leaving residents fighting for a space anywhere near their houses. Which isn't really in the spirit of the plan.

Staging

There's been a lot of criticism of the plan along the lines of "It would be fine if the alternatives were there, but they aren't!" There is some degree of truth to this - the bus network is currently nowhere near as good as it should be, so many people genuinely can't use it for their trips to the CBD. If you want to catch the very earliest train in the morning, for example, you can't get to the station by bus in time, no matter what route you live on. If you want to catch the next train, some routes do start early enough, others don't. The real problems come at the other end of the day, though. If you catch the 1710 or the 1750 peak trains, you should be okay - making it back to Ballarat just before most routes stop for the evening. But if you catch even the shoulder-peak 1823, let alone one of the later trains, there's no bus to get you home. Similarly, if you're not going to the station, just to the CBD for work or study or shopping or whatever, it is problematic for many - the frequencies are low, so you might be waiting around for ages; the services shut down too early, so you can't stay for dinner or a movie after work; and there are still parts of town the network doesn't adequately cover. If you're a hospital worker, doing a shift that doesn't perfectly fit into 9-5 business hours, you've got no chance.

But despite these limitations, there's two flaws with this line of thinking. Firstly, there may be plenty of people who genuinely can't use the bus network, but there's plenty more who could use it, but choose not to. Even if only the small subset of people who:

• live within 200m* walk of a bus stop;
• travel to the CBD; and
• do so within the buses' operating hours

actually used the buses, this would see patronage skyrocket from its current levels. And for most of them, it wouldn't represent a huge inconvenience - it may take a few minutes longer than driving, but the benefits in incidental exercise and free time would easily offset that (you can't play on your phone while driving). So, to some extent the network is there, and is more usable than people give it credit for, but there needs to be some kind of prompt to jolt people out of their habits.

The second flaw is that the network is not going to get any better unless council takes action like this, to start (veeeery slooowly) aligning the incentives for different modes of travel. The argument seems to be "You've put the cart before the horse, fix the bus network and then you can change the parking." In a scenario where one level of government had control over both, I might agree, but that's not the world we live in - council controls parking, and state government controls buses. And while I'm constantly pushing for a "build it and they will come" approach to public transport, the reality is that it's very hard to convince the state government to fund more buses until more people use the existing buses; and more people won't use the existing buses until they're incentivised to do so. So while logically the cart may be before the horse, politically this a legitimate way to press forward.

(I should point out that even in the time between parking changing and PT improving, it won't be the apocalypse many seem to think. It will be easier for many to park - and for the rest, it'll just be a slight inconvenience that might make them rethink the alternatives available to them).

Safety

There has been some commentary that takes the line of "it won't be safe for women", the implication being that the plan will mean they need to walk further, and that this isn't safe - particularly after dark. There's no denying that this is a big problem - street harassment of women is unacceptably common - but it's not really accurate to suggest that the parking plan will make this worse.

The assumption is that the status quo allows workers and shoppers to park right out the front of their destination, and will continue to; whereas the proposed system won't let them to. Firstly, it is already the case that it's often very hard to get a park right out the front of your destination, because demand outstrips supply - this is only going to get worse as the city grows, if council doesn't act. Secondly, the whole idea behind the plan is to better ration the use of existing parking, with part of the intention being to help ensure there are parks available relatively close to people's destinations - and also ensure that workers can actually park in the same place for their whole shift if they have to. Currently, many have to duck out every few hours to feed the meter or move spots.

So if anything, the plan will help reduce the distance vulnerable people need to walk to their cars.

Equity

The equity argument is a very valid concern. Any system of paid parking that only takes into account the parking space and nothing about the parker, will necessarily be regressive (in the sense that costs don't go up and down in line with the parker's ability to pay). Properly pricing parking may act as a suitable deterrent to those on an average income, so they try to use other modes when practical and only pay for parking when necessary - which is what you want. But if you set it at a level that strikes the right balance for those on an average income, those who are richer may well say "Who cares, I can afford it" and continue to over-use parking, while those who are poorer may well say "I can't afford the parking, so I won't go there" and not get access to the services they need (or visit the businesses who need their custom). Which is not the outcome you want; you want to strike that balance between providing access and encouraging alternatives to everyone, regardless of their income.

This comes up a lot in car-user charging discussions (both in terms of parking and things like congestion charging) and often the answer given is "Well, you can ease the burden in other ways through the broader tax and transfer system" - basically, compensating those on lower incomes by taxing them less or giving them refunds/payments of some kind. This is pretty dubious at the best of times, but in any case is definitely not practical here - Ballarat Council simply doesn't have access to the policy levers necessary to do this (it would have to be a Federal or State initiative). I can't think of a practical way to ramp the price up for the wealthy, but I think it might be possible for them to ramp it down for the poor - basically offer half-price parking to concession-holders. For administrative simplicity the system could align with concession fares for public transport - if you're eligible for one, you're eligible for the other. There would be no need for council to access anyone's financial info or make any judgement call as to their need - they'd just accept the word of the existing agencies like Centrelink that do.

Similarly, the plan is for residents within the zones to get one free on-street parking permit, but for them to have to pay between $100 and $200 for subsequent permits. Again, the broad principle is the right one; again, this would have an inequitable impact on some; and again, the solution is not to abandon the plan, but to provide targeted relief where necessary.

There's a common notion that people have the right to unlimited free parking on the street out the front of their houses - in fact, this was explicitly brought up in the council chambers when this proposal was discussed. The reality is that the street outside your house is public land - you don't own it, so when you're parking on the street, you're externalising the cost of storing your car onto the taxpayer. Nonetheless, in most low-density suburban places that people are used to, on-street parking for residents genuinely is the best use for this land - it's not at all unreasonable to expect this out in the 'burbs. But the closer you get to the CBD or other major activity centres, the less true this becomes. Even within the bounds of the proposal, the logic of giving residents at least one parking permit is sound. A person who lives in this part of Ballarat has much better access to services by walking, cycling and public transport than someone further out in the suburbs, so they have less need for a car - but not necessarily zero need for one. I live in this area and don't own a car - I get by fine most of the time, but I admit it's challenging at times.

The areas affected by the plan are generally the best-served by public transport (COB/PTV)

So having a one-car household in this part of town is certainly reasonable. Any more than that, and it gets a little murky. On the one hand, if you're a family wanting to store two or more cars at a property this central, it's less reasonable for you to offload the cost of storing those cars onto the public, so you probably need to pay for it one way or another - whether through the premium you pay to buy or rent a house with off-street parking, or through on-street permits like this. On the other hand, it's a lot more reasonable to expect a household to share a car if they're a family that shares all their other resources, than if they're a group of unrelated 20-year-olds in a share-house who label their food. There's no easy answers to these kinds of exceptions.

These different scenarios are what leads to the most interesting question in this debate - how much residents should have to pay for extra permits. I think the logic of charging for extra permits is definitely sound, but the success or failure of this policy will hinge on two things: how much the basic charge is, and how they manage waivers and discounts for the people that need them. In this sense it's a little disappointing that the City of Ballarat has provided so much detail on the where but so little on the how much - they've supplied a very detailed map that shows the individual properties affected, but for the cost of additional permits we've only got a broad estimate in the Courier.

So the pricing needs to be scrutinised closely and debated fiercely. As much as Ballarat is growing and urbanising quickly, it's still not Melbourne, so the permits shouldn't be too exorbitant - and broadly I don't think the proposed prices are exorbitant for the average person. Obviously a mechanism for making the permits cheaper for concession-holders, working in the same way as the concessions for hourly rates, would be very sensible. It was suggested in the council meeting that residents be issued with visitor passes for friends and family - a limited visitor permit system could definitely be worthwhile, perhaps something issued annually like those vouchers for the tip they send out. Parking will continue to be free for those with disability permits, but maybe we need to take this opportunity to increase the number (or diversify the location) of disabled spaces.

So these kinds of tweaks are definitely worth considering, and are exactly why extensive consultation is important. But Ballarat seriously needs to address parking if we're going to fix how we move around the city, and the fundamental ideas behind this plan are heading in exactly the right direction.

*The standard rule of thumb for how far most people are willing to walk to a bus is 400m, so that's kind of the "adequate access" cutoff. 200m could be considered "premium access", and there are still a lot of people who fall into this range who don't currently use the buses.