The NSW Parliament formed an inquiry into commuter car parking in June 2017 and is currently undertaking an inquiry into commuter car parking policy in NSW. The inquiry is being managed by the Committee on Transport and Infrastructure which is made up of members of the Legislative Assembly.
The terms of reference were that it inquire into and report on commuter car parking in NSW, including:
- The effectiveness of current state government policies and programs covering commuter car parking;
- Processes for selecting the location of commuter car parks;
- The potential for restricted access or user pays commuter car parks;
- Consideration of alternative modes of first mile/last mile travel, including point to point transport, active transport and on demand buses; and
- Any other related matters.
The Committee invited the public to provide submissions until 4 August 2017 and a total of 94 submissions were provided from members of the public, companies, foundations, Councils and other groups representing transport users. Recognising that there was a lack of policy direction with regard to commuter car parking, PeopleTrans also provided a submission to the Committee. Our submission can be found here.
On the 16th of October 2017 PeopleTrans attended the NSW Parliament and provided additional evidence to the inquiry into commuter car parking policy. PeopleTrans was invited to be a witness at the inquiry with respect to our submission. The witness process was designed to obtain clarification of aspects of our submission and to seek information relevant to other matters within the Committee’s terms of reference.
The questions asked by the committee were varied, touching on topics of how the Government should go about preparing a metropolitan parking plan, what fee structure, if any, should apply to commuter car parking, resident parking schemes, the role of car sharing and whether or not the Parking Space Levy should be expanded to other centres.
We hope that our responses were helpful and look forward to seeing the outcome and recommendations of the inquiry.
For more information about our parking policy and assessment expertise, please contact Alan Stewart in our Sydney office on 02 8226 8760.
