Park-and-ride charge considered
23 July 2008
SIMON EDWARDSA regional council committee has ruled out the idea of charging for commuter parking - for now.
GWRC's public transport planner Adam Lawrence said fees to put a car into one of the region's park-and-ride carparks could potentially raise money to fund extensions of carparks, improve their security and encourage passengers to use feeder buses. It might seem parking charges would discourage rail commuters by adding an extra cost but Mr Lawrence's report to the transport and access committee said, depending on how fees are implemented, "a charging regime has potential to increase overall passenger transport patronage".
For example, if more people living close to stations walked instead of using cars and more people used feeder buses, "this would free-up existing commuter parking spaces for users who currently do not use public transport".
It's been estimated that to expand park-and-ride facilities across the region would cost about $5 million in construction costs, plus property rentals of $500,000 a year (or $7 million if land is purchased). Parking fees could raise revenue for this.
However, Mr Lawrence concluded a park-and-ride ticketing system should ideally be electronically based to reduce costs and simplify usage. For that reason it would be "most feasible" to introduce it in tandem with electronic ticketing on trains. The committee agreed.
Integrated electronic ticketing on the region's buses and trains (e.g. some sort of automated debit card system that can be used on any bus or train) is three or four years off yet. GWRC public transport manager Wayne Hastie says officers are looking closely at the take-up of the new "Snapper" debit card, and other developments nationally.
Committee chairperson Peter Glensor said it is a major issue to sort out the "hodge podge" of rail commuter carparking land ownership. Until recently, legislation prevented GWRC from owning transport infrastructure, including carparks. So park-and-ride land is a mess of leases and ownership splits between the GWRC, city or district councils, Transit NZ and private businesses.
"We need to very deliberately plan to sort this out for the future," Mr Glensor said.
© 2008 Fairfax New Zealand Limited
The Wellingtonian
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