Hume Council calls for government solution on narrow streets

A COUNCIL in Melbourne’s northwest will spend $400,000 on indented parking as it deals with narrow streets that have been described as the “unwanted legacy of terrible regulations”.

No way through: David Rasho demonstrates the narrow space between two legally parked cars outside his house on Academy Drive. Picture: Hamish Blair

HUME Council will spend $400,000 providing indented parking in its narrowest streets while calling on the State Government to make developers provide adequate on-street parking.

Cr Joseph Haweil said council had to spend money fixing a problem that should never have been allowed to occur.

“Some of the streets are so narrow that if you legally park on either side of the road it’s too narrow to get emergency vehicles and garbage trucks through,” he said.

“If you have four cars and need to park two on the street, you end up having to park on the nature strip and get fined.”

He said the council had asked the government to review its regulations and make developers provide indented parking.

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“The many narrow streets in Hume are the unwanted past legacy of terrible State Government planning regulations and Hume has been left to deal with the results,” he said.

“We are getting on with the job of dealing with the issue.”

Residents forced to park on nature strips were being penalised because of the narrow streets and lack of indented parking, he said.

He said the council booked almost 17,000 people in the past two financial years, fining them $1.04 million.

Cr Haweil, who campaigned for council on a platform of getting more money for indented parking, said the 2017-2018 draft council had doubled the allocation for these projects.

He said under the proposed budget, five priority streets would get indented parking.

They were Academy Drive, Broadmeadows; Kinglake Crescent, Craigieburn; and Foxton Place, Nixon Court and Havilland Drive in Roxburgh Park.

The provision of indented parking in Academy Drive would come too late for resident David Rasho.

He was fined last year for parking on the nature strip and unsuccessfully argued his wheels had gone over the rounded kerb by 10 or 15 centimetres.

“It makes my blood boil,” he said.

A letter from mayor Drew Jessop to the Planning Minister, Richard Wynne, was tabled at last week’s council meeting.

Cr Jessop asked for a State Government review of existing subdivision standards which “fail” to provide “adequate levels of legal on street parking”.

He said when cars parked on the street, it limited access for emergency vehicles and forcing them to use the nature strips “putting both themselves and residents at risk” and damaging their vehicles or causing costly damage.