Mayoral candidate vows to stop the war on cars in Melbourne CBD
A candidate for the City of Melbourne election has vowed to “end the war on car drivers” and says increasing on-street parking could be the key to getting the CBD back on track.
Victoria
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Inner Melbourne will only bounce back if the war against drivers ends, a lord mayoral candidate says.
Jennifer Yang, runner-up to Sally Capp at the 2018 poll, said the most COVIDsafe transport was a car, and most people knew that.
“To welcome cars back into the city we must dump council’s transport strategy that celebrates intentional cuts of 22 per cent of on-street carparking in the past 15 years, and calls for higher charges for carparking, insanely removing more carparking and removing cars from the city wherever possible,” she said. “We will end the war on car drivers.”
The Greens, who could play a key balance of power role in the newly-elected city council, want cars slowed to 30km/h in the CBD and fewer of them in the inner city.
Ms Yang, an ALP member who has high political ambitions, said her Melbourne Back to Business team had a strong vision for the city.
“Our new policy will create new carparks publicly and privately, permanently slash carparking rates, remove parking limits in new developments, and end obscene budget targets for parking fines,” she said.
Ms Yang said many residents and businesses had told her they were scared for their safety in the city, and worried what would happen if the economy worsened.
“We must embrace real crime-prevention policies to help stop this,’ she said. “An example of being tough on crime is removing graffiti within 24 hours of it being reported. We’ll also cut crime by reprioritising social policy spending to provide new multimillion-dollar annual emergency funding to charity social welfare organisations, and create a crisis accommodation centre for the homeless on council land.”
Ms Yang said she would slash rates by 10 per cent and cut waste by ordering an external audit of all council spending and policies.
“We’ll create a council department dedicated to breathing life back into the night-time economy, including the appointment of an advisory board and independent advocate known as the Night-Time Mayor,” she said.
Ms Yang also pledged to double the pensioner rate discount to $250.
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