Raising debt

Do you get the feeling our city might have suddenly realised its in a bit of a financial hole?

Only a few days after the announcement parking wardens will be armed with cameras to bill more unsuspecting offenders of public safety, we now learn 4 experts from the USA are here to teach the council about alternative ways to raise more debt to fund development. Interestingly, the case study to examine this new form of debt raising will be the failed bid to develop Adelaide road.

You might recall the Adelaide road debacle?

Council began consulting in 2007 on developing Adelaide road, so it had already invested a considerable amount of time and public money, when it was subsequently told the bad news earlier this year. Apparently the council failed to appreciate from the start of the project that they could never slip the Adelaide Road project into the Basin Reserve redevelopment: “councilors were told … (in a document headed Appendix Z and buried at the bottom of a pile of reports) that the expected Transport Agency subsidy of $9 million would not be available because the changes would not significantly reduce travel times and the benefits would be worth less than the cost.” According to the article in scoop, the Adelaide Road project has been shelved for an alternative: Taranaki Street.

How much more debt is the council contemplating undertaking on our behalf? And where does it intend spending it? Hopefully it’s on infrastructure screaming out for attention (sewerage and water) and not on projects that other agencies can clearly see have no financial merit.

Where are our priorities?

Speaking of which, I also have to say that the public safety spin justifying the introduction of cameras in parking warden cars, does not sit very comfortably with me. Why wait for people to change their attitudes when they get around to opening their mail.

Why wait several weeks to get the message across?

Surely if public safety is the concern, it would be far better to have a few wardens in the at risk areas now, reminding people, that illegally stopping around schools  is a safety issue, and if they do it again they will be fined. This reinforces the issue immediately, and enforces public safety “now”, not weeks after they receive their mail. Clearly if the message has not sunk in, then by all means follow it up, with some financial incentives. But why go for the wallet first, if its a public safety issue? Lets try and help our residents out, rather than take their money.

In the meantime, lets hope the infringement notice at least explains that the reason they are being fined is due to a safety issue – and not just because they stopped illegally.

http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/2010/07/four-us-experts-to-advise-wellington-on-how-to-pay-for-new-city-developments, http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/2010/03/9m-disappears-so-adelaide-road-wont-become-a-grand-boulevard-after-all, http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/2010/07/council-to-spend-250000-photographing-illegally-parked-cars,

Parking, its a problem

Parking in our city is a real problem for both residents and non-residents.

Its getting more expensive and much more difficult to find. Non-residents struggle to find parking and are left to infringe, impacting on residents. Residents are then left to infringe in order to find a park themselves, and the only winner is the parking warden (and council) who fines everyone. No doubt this problem is a massive revenue earner for the council. Talk about stakeholder capture.

Clearly the problem is a manifestation of poor management, planning, and design.

One of the problems is poor signage. People are not able to see where residential or public parks are. I’m not a fan of signs (another form of visual pollution), and have always wondered why they don’t colour code the lines on the roads to indicate permitted parking areas.

An easy solution is to increase supply. Existing roads are a good source. We could provide more parking spaces on wide roads by having angle parks (even if its only on one side of the street). We could use idle land that is waiting re-development. Of course all of these ideas would just invite more cars coming into the city – resulting in greater congestion.

What about reducing demand? Increasing pricing would put pressure on usage. Apart from the fact, this has already been done several times already, pricing strategies merely benefit the rich, who have greater disposable income. Pricing has little impact on the decisions of the wealthy. Parking policies need to be fair.

Perhaps we could better manage existing parking spaces? For a start, we could mark out individual car spaces on the road. So often poorly parked cars result in wasted street parking, because other cars are unable to fit. Could we incentivise car and mini-van pooling by providing dedicated car-pool parking space that is free? Perhaps we could also improve our bus services. What about supporting inner city vehicle leasing and bike usage (see earlier post about the Parisian solution).

Perhaps we should ask why people are bringing their cars into the city? A study would be useful. Where are the flow of cars coming from, that puts pressure on residents parking? Is there a parking problem in another area of the town (eg, around the polytechnic) that requires attention? Taking pressure off one place, may flow though to other places, reducing parking pressures.

It’s about better management and planning of our parking.