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Get out of your car

Posted by admin pci,Tuesday, September 01, 2009



A ‘hot topic’ in the parking industry, especially in the application of planning principles and theories to the pricing of urban parking, is the ‘make parking more expensive’ argument. Refer to our recent blog posts, San Francisco City Parking Report, and Head out of the sand please, Mosman residents!

Coined ‘Out of the car thinking’, the approach is all about making cities more attractive for people and less attractive for cars. By raising parking costs, investing in public transportation, and making cities more livable, you’re solving a higher-order problem. It’s not the quantity of cars that needs to be parked; it’s the attitude towards cars and our dependence on them for transportation.

An excerpt from Parking Today’s blog summed up this long term solution, pioneered by Prof Donald Shoup, quite nicely:

It involves not only changing how we drive but how we live. Make cities more attractive and people will move there. The first step – raise parking costs. Make it more difficult to park, and people will find alternatives and change their habits.




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Parking spaces are 'created' by £10 tariff

Posted by admin pci,Tuesday, September 01, 2009



The article, ‘Parking spaces are 'created' by £10 tariff’, proves the point – put prices up, and parking spaces are created! In this case, it’s a slightly different scenario – we have a hospital with free parking, but such a demand for parking that available spaces are almost impossible to find. By introducing a £10 tariff to park over four hours, hospital management eliminated the local commercial office workers from using the hospital car park for their daytime parking, and created vacancies in the hospital car parking lots. Simple and effective! Revenue generation is only an added bonus….


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Head out of the sand please, Mosman residents!

Posted by admin pci,Monday, August 24, 2009



As letters continue to rain upon the Mosman Daily’s editor expressing rage over the introduction of parking meters, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that everything in Mosman is free.

(For those of you who are not familiar with the latest developments in PCI’s home ground, view our recent blog post, A Metered Debate?).

As one example out of many, lessons can be learned from Santa Rosa, California, where local council has recently applied demand-based pricing theories to the price of parking spaces, with prices varying based on how popular the spaces are.  And we know how popular those Balmoral beach front spaces can be!

Santa Rosa Council has found that instead of turning people away, these strategies have resulted in increases to local retailers’ overall revenue. There are many benefits to be derived from the application of ‘Shoupian’ theories (based on the research conducted by Donald Shoup of UCLA), many of which Mosman council may wish to consider!



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Like Twister for Godzilla!

Posted by admin pci,Monday, August 24, 2009



A three month seafront celebration in Weston, UK, will see colour-coded car parks arranged according to vehicles’ colour. It’s part of the summer art festival on Weston’s Beach Lawns.

Perhaps inspired by our previous blog post reporting on California’s Southwestern College in 1994, Finding your way made easier by colour?


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Car park rage in Sydney

Posted by admin pci,Monday, August 24, 2009



August 13, 8pm in a car park in Sydney’s west. An argument over a car space leads to… a man being stabbed in the buttocks.

All this could have been avoided with a good Parking Guidance System, or some civil behaviour!

He won’t be reverse parking for a while….

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Melbourne Car Park sells for $38m

Posted by admin pci,Thursday, August 13, 2009



The car park at 522 Flinders Lane in Melbourne has recently been sold by ISPT for $38 million to a local private buyer. We understand that the car park comprises around 1200 spaces and therefore this would indicate a price per bay of just over $30,000. 

Knight Frank agent Clinton Baxter said that new apartment and office towers were generally adopting lower car-space ratios and new car parks were less likely to be approved by the government, making the opportunities to buy CBD car parks extremely scarce.  

Read the full article from The Australian, Melbourne car park nets $38m, here.


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Mirvac calls it a day on car park management

Posted by admin pci,Tuesday, August 11, 2009



Mirvac has announced that it is in the process of disbanding the car park management side of its business, reports The Australian.

According to the article, it is in the process of signing over nine of its larger car parks to Wilson Parking, and handing the management of two of its shopping centre car parks, Broadway and Rhodes, back to the shopping centre owners. Further car parks within hotels of the group will be handed back to be managed by the hotel management from next month.

The Australian reports that Mirvac’s car park holdings peaked at 22 locations last year, and the total number of bays being managed by Mirvac as they look to disband their car parking business is around 14,000 across various sites.


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Cash for clunkers

Posted by admin pci,Tuesday, August 11, 2009



The US Senate recently passed a ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program, allowing owners of old, emission-heavy vehicles, to receive up to USD$4500 when they trade them in for new, fuel efficient vehicles.

Environmental website TreeHugger, in an article entitled Cash for Clunkers Passes - Auto Industry Saved? Blue Skies Ahead? explores the issue both from the perspective of how much it will save in terms of emissions, but also in terms of the implications for the flagging US automotive industry, prior to the bill being made into law.

Since coming into effect, the Cash for Clunkers program has proved wildly successful; running out of funds in just over a week. In a follow up article, Cash for Clunkers Controversy Continues: Some Senators Won't Approve Unless It's Made GreenerTreeHugger looks at how the criteria for securing a grant are considered by many as too lenient, and unlikely to make any significant effect on overall automotive emissions.

It should be noted that such programs have been around in Europe for the last 10 years.

PCI’s foreign correspondent, on a trip to Italy in July, noted that there were hardly any old vehicles on the road - most being new, small models. Indeed, in Italy there is a high take up of the incentives being offered to scrap old and polluting cars. The incentives are issued by the government to drivers wishing to scrap their vehicles (classified as Euro 0, 1 or 2 - based on their CO2 emissions) and purchase a vehicle classified Euro 4 or 5 (with maximum emissions of 140gr CO2/km for petrol and 130gr CO2/km for diesel engines). The amount of the incentive for 2009 is of €1,500 (around $A2,500). Higher benefits accrue for the purchase of low emission commercial vehicles. In addition, car manufacturers offer special discounts and, in certain cases, an exemption from the annual registration charge for up to three years. Similar incentives exist in Spain, France and Germany.

So – is the US actually trying to improve the environment from the evils of its polluting automotive range? Or is it just trying to improve the financial health of its automotive industry given the dire performance over the past 12 months…? Well, we think that an initiative that may contribute to both is well worth it!



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Didn’t plan for this…

Posted by admin pci,Thursday, August 06, 2009



We came across an interesting article in the Canberra Times this week about the most planned of all Australian cities, Canberra. Architects and sustainability experts are concerned about the increasing rate of urban sprawl in the city, especially in the northern suburbs, and the impact on the city’s future.

”But the more that planning and transport experts promote a compact city to address climate change, counter rising petrol prices, traffic congestion, the high cost of doing business in Canberra, the more it seems the ACT is going in the opposite direction. This city which prides itself on sound planning is spending billions of dollars on new roads, freeways, lakeside car parks and multi-level car parking towers to keep cars as the first mode of transport” says John Thistleton.

This is representative of the issues being faced by most Australian cities and the lack of vision in future-proofing of metropolitan areas. We are strongly of the belief that parking is just one of the elements in a wider transportation and accessibility issue and as long as new car park spaces continue to be built…

Read the full article, Sprawling from Grace, here. 


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Canberra to become Australia’s first electric recharge city

Posted by admin pci,Thursday, August 06, 2009



In another story on Canberra this week, it has been announced that our capital will become the first Australian city and only the third in the world to support electric cars, with an international company pledging to establish recharge points in the capital's homes, workplaces and shopping centres within three years.

The company facilitating the installation, sustainable transport company Better Place, said it would begin work on establishing plug-in points and automated battery ''swap 'n' go'' across Canberra in 2011, with completion of a basic network within 12 months.

There would be sufficient infrastructure in place from the outset to accommodate the early uptake of electric vehicles. He said Canberra had been chosen as the starting point in Australia because of its size, high motor vehicle use, and because it had the highest proportion of garage parking and two-car households.




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