Roads around Box Hill Hospital, Box Hill Institute becoming ‘carparks’

LIVING in Box Hill has its perks, but many commuters and residents face the same struggle every time they get behind the wheel.

Residents say the cars parking on the street is making it harder to drive around. Picture: Tim Carrafa

Residents of booming Box Hill say parking congestion is becoming so bad they’re struggling to even get out of their driveways and streets.

They say many streets in Whitehorse, particularly around Box Hill Hospital and student housing, are becoming a traffic-choked carpark.

And they’re blaming the boom in high-density housing and student accomodation, which is choking the streets around Box Hill Hospital, the railway station and shopping precincts.

Box Hill North residents say many parked cars crammed into streets in the suburb is making it increasingly difficult to get around.

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Lisa Bravington, who lives near Springfield Rd, said she often had difficulty turning because parked cars obscured vision at intersections.

“I can’t see at the top of my street because there’s lots of parked cars,” Ms Bravington said.

Residents say too many parked cars are making it harder to get around. Picture: Tim Carrafa

She said she had lived in Box Hill North her entire life, and attributed the newfound situation to the boom in apartments.

“There’s lots of new units going up near me,” she said.

Kara Trippett is one of the many who agree with her.

Her parents live in Springfield Rd, where she grew up.

“It’s only since all the townhouses went up that the problems started,” Ms Trippett said.

“No one ever parked on the road back in the day. Now with the higher density living in the area and all the extra cars per house block, it’s actually a nightmare,” she said.

Others say Box Hill Hospital’s lack of parking is a cause of the congestion. Yvonne Warneke lives 1km from the hospital and said the on-street parking in her street was taken up by hospital staff “all the time”.

“It used to be a really, really quiet street,” she said.

Parked cars choke the streets around Box Hil Hospital. Picture: Tim Carrafa

As she lives on a crescent, she said the on-street parking wasn’t a big issue because traffic wasn’t as congested as on other roads.

But she said other Box Hill North streets, particularly Shannon St, were “very, very tight” to drive through.

She said the parked cars made driving more hazardous, with none of the streets allowing more than one car to pass through at a time.

Student parking and sharehouses are also contributing to the volume of cars needing to be parked along the street, with Box Hill Institute just south of the hospital.

Whitehorse Council last month upped the number of carparking spaces required at purpose-built student housing after its study found demand for student carparking exceeded the amount required in the planning scheme.

Someone placed a note on the front windscreen in Olympiad Cres. Picture: Tim Carrafa

The review, prompted by complaints about students causing on-street parking congestion, found about half of all students living in student accommodation in Box Hill owned cars.

The council estimated 37,000 students attended Box Hill Institute this year, while 28,000 went to Deakin University.

Almost 20,000 of them live in Whitehorse, across purpose-built housing, shared housing and illegal housing.

Councillor Sharon Ellis said the problem stemmed from the argument that students didn’t have cars when the Student Policy was written in 2006.

“As a result of that up, we end up with our side streets filled with cars,” she said.

“The reality is, students do have cars.”

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The council also changed the rules so those at student accommodation facilities were ineligible to apply for parking permits.

The study also pointed out the council could not control parking at unofficial student accommodation, such as share houses.