Parking World

Westfield Woes

Westfield have found themselves with a publicity nightmare at their West Lakes shopping centre in South Australia.

It appears they have been getting a bit narked at the number of commuters parking all day in their shopping centre, as well as copping the overflow from the local football stadium. This is obviously impinging on shoppers parking, despite there being an enforced time limit in the carpark of 3 or 4 hours.

Seems they struck on the apparently reasonable solution of installing boom gates and ticket machines along with paid parking for those that overstay their welcome. In other words free parking for those who are utilising the carpark for what it was originally designed for, but a fee for those that wish to abuse this system and park for longer.

Unfortunately the local media has grabbed this, sponsored by a few of the shop keepers who seem hell bent on retarding their own businesses, and decided to bash Westfield for the idea.

Westfield has had to lodge development plans with the local City of Charles Sturt council prior to installation, and I believe it is the local council which is currently providing the enforcement in the carpark. If so, this smacks of a conflict of interest as they are benefactors of PIN fees under the current system and will most likely lose out on the change in arrangements. So how can they be relied upon to make a balanced decision?

This situation begs a another couple of questions. If the council is responsible for policing the carpark, yet Westfield is still feels its shoppers are disadvantaged, what discussions have taken place between them to improve the level of enforcement?

If the proposal is to go ahead, why are some tenants so against the idea when it will actually improve the parking for their customers? Read some tenants reactions here.

Seems that Westfield was short on precise information on the proposal prior to lodging the application, and now has a lot of selling to do to both its tenants and shoppers alike. Perhaps they should have done this first?

JP

Performance Based Pricing

For those who are not familiar with this term, may I suggest you read the page 12 article in the February edition of the magazine, by Donald Shoup.

Whilst Professor Shoup has a few detractors, I find his arguments quite compelling and feel he has a lot to offer when it comes to parking pricing and practices.

One of the most interesting proposals is that you can remove time limits from metered areas when you have the pricing right. The logic is there, but with the huge fluctuations in traffic caused by the recent oil price spike (and crash) and global economic crisis, it may be a little harder to put into practice right now.

However, when things settle down again, I am sure he is right. But, who has the gumption to put it into practice? Any suggestions?

JP

Got it Wrong!

Sometimes we get things wrong - and I am no exception (my better half would reckon I am wrong more than right!).

In this case I owe an apology to Sabar Technologies, Siemens Traffic Solutions and Turner Parking Services for an error in the current issue of the magazine.

In the People in Parking page, acknowledging Rebecca Turner joining the firm of Turner Parking, I mistakenly reported that Turner Parking were Australian agents for both Sabar and Siemens - this is incorrect, and I unreservedly apologise to all concerned for this error.

I need to vary the old chippys advice of measure twice, cut once - to the editing creed of check twice, print once!

JP

Tax on Health?

I can't work out if the UK Government is just desperate to buy votes, or if they are plain stupid. They are confusing paying for hospital carparking with taxes. Nicola Sturgeon, the UK Health Secretary is quoted as saying that if you charge people for parking in a hospital carpark, you are taxing them for being ill! 

The most curious thing is, the hospital carparks were free less than ten years ago, but with a most of the hospitals being in built up areas, every man and his dog were parking in them. This meant they were always full and genuine hospital patients, staff and visitors could never find a park. The answer they came up with was to charge fees to reduce the impact of these unwanted parkers.

Now all of a sudden, with the Labour government staring down the barrel of a trouncing at the next general election, they decide that its a tax on health and so it must become a free-for-all again.

This will mean that in six months time when there are people screaming about the increased lack of parking in and around hospitals, they will have a bigger headache than now.

Another problem they will have is that the current income from the carparks is also supplementing the services provided by the hospitals, and they will getting next to nothing to replace this lost income if the plan is introduced. So, services will suffer - more screaming.

If this government had any idea about solving this apparent moral problem, they would simply introduce a verification system where patients could leave without payment. They also allow discounts for hospital staff if they wished (I am sure the staff would wish this!), and retain the full fee for others.

There are any number of systems available on the market to facilitate the solving of this problem in a fair and equitable fashion.

Vote buying will not only exacerbate the problem, but will more than likely breed more.

JP