How does mass transit entice users en mass?

We love examples of thinking that’s different and brings a new perspective to planning and transportation. We came across an article on Slate.com this week that discussed British consultant Charles Leadbeater’s matrix for re-thinking city design and management. Based on the psychologist Simon Baron-Choen’s work with Asperger’s patients, Leadbeater divided city transportation and management on […]

SF’s variable parking not having the intended effect?

According to an article published on the Greater Greater Washington site, the variable pricing component of the SFPark program in San Francisco is not having the intended effect. Even with higher rates, the more popular blocks still fill up, and other blocks remain under-filled, even at low prices. The City has just implemented another meter […]

Westminster ends free parking – others should do the same!

In the UK, Westminster City Council has announced that free parking is to be abolished in the district, preventing around 1,200 cars from parking without charge. According to the Fitzrovia News site, the move has been welcomed by residents who complain about cars blocking streets and circulating looking for free parking spaces. But it has […]

Melbourne Airport opens new ‘Ring & Ride’ area

Melbourne Airport has introduced a new ‘Ring and Ride’ waiting area in its long term car park, where drivers can wait for arriving passengers to phone to say that they are ready to be picked up from the airport’s terminal. According to the Australian Business Traveller, Airport CEO Chris Woodruff explained that the Ring & […]

Paid parking pays off for Joondalup

Meanwhile, the City of Joondalup (north of Perth) announced last week that the introduction of paid parking in their city centre has resulted in an increase in the number of visitors to the area. According to InMyCommunity, the scheme has met targets with regards to freeing up bays for short-term visitors, shifting them from commuters […]

Dutch bicycle congestion

The Dutch are facing the consequences of their own cycling success, including congestion, lack of parking and infrastructure. In a country where bicycles outnumber people by 1.2 million, the Dutch have simply run out of space to accommodate the 5 million cyclists who take to the road every day.  In Amsterdam alone, 490,000 cyclists travel […]

Technology breakthrough counters abuse of disabled parking

A New Zealand company has developed technology that will monitor and manage disabled parking, with the aim of putting to an end the misuse of disability parking permits. Instead of carrying a printed permit, disabled drivers would have an electronic tag in their car that can be read by sensors placed in the parking bays. […]

Time expired

An oldie but a goodie. This lady always used to say that when she died, she wanted a parking meter on her grave that said ‘expired’. So her family got her one!

Darwin council increases parking fine revenue

Darwin City Council increased its revenue from fees and fines by around $500,000 year on year, according to the NTnews.com.au site. This included an increase in fines from $917,000 to $1,193,000, and an increase in fees from $3,597,000 to $4,042,000 from the previous year. The Lord Mayor Graeme Sawyer said that this could be attributed […]

Sydney traffic getting slower

Sydney’s traffic has got worse on six of the seven major roads in the past year, according to the finds of the recently released NSW Auditor-General’s report into transport and ports. The report comes as the NSW Government announced that a transport masterplan deadline has been set for November 2012. Of the seven arterial routes […]

Counting parking spots from above

We came across a really interesting study by two students at the University of Connecticut, who have analysed aerial photographs of a number of cities, figuring out the location of at-grade car parks and counting all the spaces. It’s interesting for two reasons. Firstly, they found that in some of the cities they analysed (New […]

Do bicycles improve urban economies?

We came across an interesting piece this week which attempted to analyse the economic impact (and benefit) of using bicycles over cars, given the increasing uptake and supporting infrastructure being implemented in cities in Australia and around the world. In theory, it’s a good idea – bicycle-related infrastructure is relatively cheap to install compared to […]

Are Consultants useless and a waste of money?

An article recently contributed to Parking Today by Andrew Hill caught our eye. The article was called ‘Consultants are… “Useless,” “A Waste of Money”’, and in it, Andrew asks about one of the greatest challenges that consultants face: responding to accusations of over-charging for services or under-delivering on common sense solutions. He goes on to […]

Meanwhile on the Gold Coast

At the risk of sounding like all we do at Parking & Traffic Consultants is attend conferences, Kelvin Worthington will be presenting a paper at next week’s Campus Parking Workshop organised by the Parking Association of Australia on the topic of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) as they apply to hospitals and universities. He is presenting […]

Canberra’s parking squeeze

An opinion piece published on The Canberra Times site this week discussed the reaction of the Canberra community to the news that parking inspectors increased the number of infringements by 20% during this past year, reaching a value of $7.5 million. According to the newspaper article, Canberra’s layout is such that it makes car ownership […]

Davis Langdon Construction Sentiment Survey, Q3 2011

The September release of the Davis Langdon Sentiment Survey has seen the key sentiment indicator drop considerably from the April results, now down to -11 percent. According to Davis Langdon, this reflects a growing and ongoing uncertainty that has marked the industry through much of 2011. Optimism has declined in most states, which is reflected […]

Australian Parking Convention 2012

The Parking Association of Australia has announced the 13th Australian Parking Convention to be held once again at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, on November 11 – 13, 2012. The program will be designed to appeal to a broad range of individuals working within the parking industry, as well as providing a number of […]

Madame Parking: Teresa Sapey

When in Bogota recently for a client meeting, Cristina Lynn came across a very interesting woman dubbed “Madame Parking” by a Spanish design magazine. Teresa Sapey is an architect and designer based in Madrid, Spain. Amongst a wide range of beautiful and innovative public and private works (including this stunning video of Madrid’s Christmas Lights […]

Adelaide premier rolls back hospital parking fees

Both WA and SA have seen heated public debates over the past few months over the cost of parking at hospitals, with state government parking fee rate rises in WA in particular receiving significant negative backlash from the general public as well as the opposition party. You can read more about the Health Department’s proposed […]

Townsville parking officers to wear recorders

Council officers in Townsville are being equipped with small recording devices to give them additional support in dealing with angry motorists. The devices are being worn on the outside of the shirts of the officers, and are able to capture both voice and image recordings. The tool is being used mainly for collecting evidence, with […]

Perth airport introduces Park & Wait short-term facility

Perth airport has introduced a new Park & Wait facility in a bid to discourage illegal parking by the main entrance to the domestic terminal. According to The West Australian, despite all short-term car parks at the airport being free for the first 10 minutes, approximately 63,000 motorists are illegally parking around the precinct waiting […]

Australian airport regulations once again in focus

Australian Airports are again in conflict with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), with the incoming ACCC chairman making a speech singling out the airports as a particular focus of attention. Press reports from SMH.com.au quote Rod Sims, the ACCC chairman, as proposing greater regulation over the services provided by the privately owned airports, […]

Cycling in China and Australia

An article published last week on The Conversation drew comparisons between cycling in China and Australia, ultimately with the aim of applying  learnings from the high bicycle usage in China to the growing but still infant usage in our country. The author, Matthew Burke, a research fellow at Griffith University, believes firstly that infrastructure is […]

IBM launches city parking analytics system

IBM has announced the launch of a system designed to help ease parking congestion, collect more parking fees, and help motorists find parking spaces more easily in crowded urban areas. According to PCWorld, the system is being offered in conjunction with Streetline leveraging their remote sensor technology, combined with IBM’s analytical software which aggregates the […]

For heaven’s sake can we stop queuing through intersections?

A guest post by Andrew Morse, our senior traffic engineering consultant There, I’ve said it and I feel much better.  Well not really because every day I am astounded by the number of drivers who think it’s perfectly acceptable to enter an intersection (typically on amber) knowing full well that they can’t clear the intersection […]

Are new parking charges illegal?

According to the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, the Cotswold District Council (UK) recently voted to extend weekday parking charges to Sundays and apply a flat rate £1.50 fee for overnight parking between 6pm and 8am, in a bid to raise £55,000 extra revenue. In the newspaper article it is claimed that a UK parking consultant […]

Technology enabling greater vehicle utilisation

We have posted in the past a number of articles about car sharing, with companies such as GoGet operating in Australia and Zipcar in the US. Robin Chase, the founder Zipcar, talked at TED in 2007 about a range of other technology-enabled ways of reducing car usage, the first being technology to enable ‘ridesharing’ – […]

Melbourne CBD park values continue to rise

Fairfax reported this week that the value of individual car park bays in the Melbourne CBD are now selling up to $100,000, due to population growth and Melbourne City Council’s discouragement of long-term commercial parking. According to data from Savills Australia, state-titled single car parking bays, such as the Paramount complex in Bourke Street, are […]

Parking Today interviews university parking professionals

Following our post two weeks ago interviewing parking professional Barbara Chance on automated car parks, this week Parking Today magazine have published a summation of an interview with two parking professionals from the University of Texas, Austin, exploring the issues facing university campus parking.  The two interviewees are Bob Harkins, Associate VP for Campus Safety […]

SA Transport Chief calls for reduced CBD car parking

The Advertiser reported this week that the chief executive of Adelaide City Council’s Transport Department has called for a reduction in the number of car spaces in the CBD, and an increase in parking pricing. Rod Hook, Transport Department chief executive, was reported by The Advertiser as saying that Adelaide commuters had become too used […]


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