By Adam Carey
Residents in Melbourne’s north with unusually narrow streets could be given the right to park on nature strips without being fined, reversing years of punitive council policy.
The City of Hume penalises thousands of people every year for parking on nature strips, in what one councillor described as unfair punishment for a legacy of poor urban design.
Roxburgh Park resident Salma Toma was fined by her council after recently parking with two tyres on the nature strip.Credit: Jutin McManus
Councillors voted this month to consider overhauling Hume’s policy on parking infringements, and to stop targeting residents of the city’s network of narrow streets.
On-street parking is a heated issue in Hume. The council received more than 9000 complaints last financial year for infractions including blocking driveways, occupying restricted zones for too long and blocking the road.
Thousands of fines issued by the council – 3955 in all –were due to parking on nature strips.
The council is spending millions converting nature strips on its narrowest streets into paved parking bays, in recognition of the high demand for on-street parking. Hume, which includes suburbs such as Broadmeadows, Craigieburn and Sunbury, has high car-dependency, with two-thirds of households owning two or more cars.
The indented bays are being built on streets that are less than three metres wide, preventing most cars from safely passing between cars parked on either side of the road.
According to a council officers’ report, the City of Hume spent $3.6 million over the past seven years building indented parking bays on 62 narrow streets. It plans to continue the program on 57 more streets at an estimated cost to ratepayers of $3.2 million.
The program has led to a rush of requests from people seeking to have indented parking bays installed outside their home, although many are rejected because the street is not narrow enough.
“This has led to some resentment and complaints from residents,” the report said.
Under the proposed policy change, residents who live on a street less than three metres wide would be permitted to park on the nature strip directly outside their own home.
Cr Sam Misho, who led the initial notice of motion to review the narrow-streets parking policy in July, said people were being punished for living in suburbs with excessively narrow streets due to poor state planning decisions. The problem had been made worse by the council’s approval of many new apartments and units in the area, he said.
“There are certain people who can only live in certain suburbs because of their discretionary incomes; they can’t afford to live in affluent suburbs where the streets are wide,” Misho said. “They park on nature strips not because of an intent to break the law but because they want to protect the assets they have. Their car is their treasure for some of them.”
Misho said council contractors “come out and hand out fines like a deck of poker cards to every car on the street, without understanding the predicament”.
During debate on the motion at the council’s September 9 meeting, Cr Joseph Haweil said the council “need to take the boot off the neck of the residents of Hume City where it comes to enforcing infringements”.
“What we have done to date has not worked, and we have the terrible scenario where people, because of issues not of their own making, across our city are dealing with infringement upon infringement every day.”
No councillors opposed the motion, although Cr Jack Medcraft argued that many people who park on the street have garages but use them as home gyms or even bedrooms.
The report noted that there were environmental costs to parking on nature strips and replacing them with indented parking bays, including loss of tree canopy and root damage.
Roxburgh Park resident Salma Toma was fined $119 last month for parking with two wheels of her car on the nature strip outside her house so that it did not obstruct traffic. She said her car had previously been sideswiped when parked on the street.
“I was very upset,” Toma said. “It was in front of my house and I don’t have any other place to park because I have other cars already in the house.”
Her household owns four cars: one each for her, her husband and their two children. Her street doesn’t meet the criteria for being classified as narrow.
Toma plans to appeal her fine.
“I would also like to apply for indented parking,” Toma said. “That would make a lot of difference, and we shouldn’t get these fines.”
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