Adelaide City Council looks towards digital parking, shun ticket machines
A plan to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by replacing CBD ticket machines with phone apps while making hundreds of free car parks paid is set to be considered.
City
Don't miss out on the headlines from City. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Adelaide City Council’s $3m smart-parking app used by just 26 people to buy extra time
- How to get the most out of your Advertiser subscription
More than 300 free parking spaces in the CBD would be converted to paid spots under plans to go before an Adelaide City Council committee.
Half the free spaces on sections of Gilbert, Halifax, Carrington, Grote, Franklin, Waymouth and Currie streets would be affected.
That would net the council an estimated extra $467,000 in revenue per year.
Under an alternative option, free 10-hour spaces on parts of South and East terraces, Peacock Road and Unley Road through the south parklands, would become paid parks, raking in $165,000 a year.
The council will also consider removing parking meters from some streets in order to increase use of its multimillion-dollar smart parking app.
The council is considering that move for hundreds of 10-hour parking bays in North Adelaide and the CBD. Meters would be covered to force commuters to use the Park Adelaide mobile app to pay.
Parking prices could also be discounted as an incentive, down from a maximum of $14 a day to $10. The 440 parking bays would be along War Memorial Drive and Pennington, King William and Frome roads in North Adelaide, as well as Bartels and Wakefield roads in the city. It comes as a report showed just 1.5 per cent of the council’s $10.8m on-street parking revenue in 2018/19 came from the Park Adelaide mobile app, which allows drivers to pay for parking on their phones. Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor said the council had “invested heavily” in the technology and wanted to see it better used.
“We know that parking is always an issue in the city, so we are making sure we look at options to make it more accessible, easier and efficient, as well as get high usage,” she said.
MORE NEWS
Childers St home of James Stobie must be heritage-listed says North Adelaide Community group
Parklands to home sick wildlife
Parking fine reminder scrapped by council
She said the trial could be used to “transition” people to prioritise the Park Adelaide app for payment citywide.
In March 2019, the council installed 2800 sensors across the city that provide accurate, real-time information about parking availability and time limits. The app and the sensors cost $3m. However, motorists have so far been much more likely to use the app to find available spaces rather than to pay for them, instead using credit cards or coins.
The council may also trial “surge parking”, where the fee would increase or decrease by 25 per cent depending on occupancy rates. Under SA law, a ticket machine is required for all paid parking, but this could change by the end of the year, a council report said.
