Alice Coster: Greedy councils creating parking rage

How has it become almost impossible to get a parking permit in your own suburb, yet the developers across the road can somehow get prime parking positions on the street?

The bulging forehead vein was the first giveaway. White-knuckled clenching, a thumping of fist on the steering wheel. A loud toot would then be followed by one, extremely aggressive, long, continuous honk.

Frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog was when you knew they had seriously lost it. Growing up with my mother in the driver’s seat meant I witnessed a lot of road rage.

Not, I might add from my parent, but from the red-faced, quivering with rage driver behind her, losing their proverbial at our car’s seriously slowing speed.

Mum loves a red light, somehow slows on an overtake and happily takes her sweet time getting from A to B.

We used to call her the Lady Bowler driver, which would probably draw the ire of female lawn bowlers these days. But mum really has a knack for causing someone’s inner Furiosa on the road.

Angry drivers are a common sight on Melbourne roads.

Inwardly gleeful, I would usually stick up the bird while staring nonchalantly from my back seat as they went for the overtake. This would only confound their rage.

They would then be seen hollering at poor mum on the way past as we made our way to school.

Perhaps it was due to this childhood that I grew up to become a reluctant road rager.

Changing lanes? Nah, I’m cool to stay in this one even if it’s clogged. Someone just cut in? No probs, come right on over, why not let two in while here. A driver up front has the telltale head down on the phone at a green light? I’ll just hang around and wait too.

Always preferring to ride shotgun among friends, I’ve watched as they too start spitting and frothing, swearing and getting stressed as they try to switch lanes on choc-a-block Punt, or blood boiling as they try to get their way along Sydney Rd.

Parking rage is the new road rage in Melbourne.

All that bluster and bother just felt so unnecessary and rather rude. That was until this week, the week when the rage set in.

My inner furiosa is not technically road rage – it’s more parking rage in Melbourne’s deeply congested inner-city suburbs and surely I am not alone.

Parking is to enter a battlefield. Vying for a park in peak hour leaves you either triumphant, or feeling deeply deflated.

It’s always been a first-in-best-dressed scenario for the 2P prime spots across the road from me. These parks are like hen’s teeth in our crammed ‘burb of newly-built townhouses with minimal off-street parking.

Every week a new three-level concrete blob bobs up, usually with eight or so units, replacing what was formerly a three-bedder Edwardian home at best.

Now Port Phillip City Council have put up new parking signs marking the prime parking positions: WORK ZONES!

Parking inspectors are swooping on residents parking in tradies’ car parks.

Grey ghosts now circle every morning on the off chance someone has parked into what have become tradies’ car parks. Along with the early morning dew, the parking inspectors pounce to issue a $115 fine at five minutes past 7am.

Don’t ask me how I know this.

How has it become almost impossible to get a parking permit in your own suburb, yet the developers across the road can somehow get four prime parking positions on the street?

Most of the time the tradies aren’t even there, but that doesn’t mean you can park in the Work Zone spaces from 7am to 5pm from Monday to Friday, there is a two-hour reprieve on Saturday with a 9am start.

And it is no surprise that a little bit of research reveals car ownership is up and available parks are going the other way in a hurry.

Parking in the wrong spot can be costly.

The number of registered vehicles in metropolitan Melbourne grew to just over three million in 2023, according to the federal Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, meaning there are about 1.5 cars for every dwelling.

Councils are approving monstrous new high rises, yet the number of car park spaces attached to the developments are embarrassingly low, with residents pointed in the direction of public transport.

That’s all well and good and we all understand the environmental arguments about having fewer cars on the road, but that narrative doesn’t wash given the parking deficit across Melbourne’s local streets is now dire.

And this blatant revenue raising from greedy councils means we’re on edge, stressed out by a constant two-hour deadline breathing down our necks.

Gulp, have I entered my Karen era?