Easily wound up!!
Your views would carry more weight if it wern't so apparent where your self interest lies. If I were a weekend rider who only needed to "pop" into town for an hour or two once in a while (when the weather was nice of course) I suppose I'd appreciate all those free short term parks dotted around the city. So I guess its easy to see why you have no problem with expecting commuters to pay and park off-road.Originally Posted by sinned
Anyway, thanks for your support, do drop by again.
"There must be a one-to-one correspondence between left and right parentheses, with each left parenthesis to the left of its corresponding right parenthesis."
Forum whore
Let us fantasize and think what could occur if WCC agreed to provide parks in all the locations suggested in this thread.
Summer is arriving and many commuters will be thinking, should I buy a scooter? Well why not, fuel is expensive and a scooter uses little of that, they are not expensive to buy and best of all parking is free. It is a no-brainer for someone needing to reduce their costs.
Given the growth in ownership of 2 wheeled transport I wouldn't be surprised if another 100+ free parking spots were filled up by Feb 2010. And then KBrs can have another crack at the WCC - why not make all of Featherston Street MC parking and ......?
My point is; if parking is provided free the relative cost of public transport, 2 wheels and cars is distorted and the demand for bike parking will never be meet. ACC discovered this with physio services.
Here for the ride.
<- A new way to take a rubber!
Has the council started handing out warning notices?
Error 0x805660
I don't particularly see a problem with this possibility.
Idiot Mechanic
In a city centre there will never be enough parking, it's the councils job to manage changes surrounding commuter preferences though. Put simply, if there are more people using bikes the council has an obligation to step up and react to that, they are supposed to be managing the city after all ...
Forum whore
Agreed, and the WCC appear to be stepping up and reacting to the bike parking situation.
Here for the ride.
Wearing Hi-Viz Black.
Interesting. This was on last night's news.
Yes WCC will be using the cameras to ticket motorists, according to the article.
TOP QUOTE: “The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”
Idiot Mechanic
yeah, sounds like 'appear' is quite right. The main advice give by Jon/WCC seems to be 'pay for private parking', and that's fair enough in many respects. However, if we're talking about an extra 550 bikes in an area as small as the CBD that's only a part of a solution rather than the be all and end all.
I don't think that any one suggestion here will resolve the problem but taking a little from most of them would help a lot. So far Jon/WCC have just said 'no' to everything while quoting stats from unknown sources (with the exception of a few on street parks which have been noted, good on ya for that)
One major problem with paid for bike parking on the street is that there is nowhere on a bike to put a ticket which is secure from straying hands and the wellington wind, it's not really a workable solution for on-street and would probably cost a small fortune in people going to court saying that they did have a ticket, honest (I'm sure some of the more on to it bikers would exploit this to get away with not buying tickets in the first place as well; making prosecution a necessity as well as next to impossible to enforce).
If parking wardens could be trusted to not spuriously ticket bikes to make quotas then an approach to parking on the pavement where safe to do so would work wonders, unfortunately, without properly marked areas this is an unlikely reality though.
Forum whore
There is a solution used in hundreds of places outside NZ. See the photo in this post http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/sh...&postcount=150 . The machines providing a means of paying for a numbered parking lot have been and may still be used in other areas of NZ for car parks.
Here for the ride.
Idiot Mechanic
I'm not too familiar with the existing infrastructure as I tend to park out of town, I've only ever seen ticket type machines though and the approach of having a meter per park might wind up costing a lot to put in place.
That said, I really an unclear on which type of meters are used so excuse me if I'm way off the mark
Easily wound up!!
So far the parking wardens have done an excellent job not ticketing bikes parked on the footpaths. And I'd suggest that by far the majority of bikes on footpaths are well out of everyone's way. Not least because the council has spent (how many?) years steadily reducing road widths around the CBD and enlarging the footpaths.
No one here is suggesting that inconsiderately parked bikes shouldn't be ticketed and the wardens already have the technology to photograph vehicles they ticket in order to justify their actions.
What we have here is a somewhat simplistic and punitive response to a largely localised problem that avoids the council having forgo any income from the conversion of existing P&D parking (not that this is in anyway about revenue) with no real attempt at compromise on the part of the Council.
What will now happen is that very few off-road parks will be used so long as free parking remains. Those off-road park operators will start to lobby the Council to introduce some sort of time-limit or coupon parking scheme else it will be no longer "economical" for them to continue to offer the service.
We should be honoured to be witnesses in the birth of a whole new revenue stream, players in a whole new economy in its infancy.
(and it will wipe the smile off the faces of those queue jumping, congestion dodging, free parking, dangerous, smug and antisocial motorcyclists.)
"There must be a one-to-one correspondence between left and right parentheses, with each left parenthesis to the left of its corresponding right parenthesis."
Forum whore
Technology has few limits.
A common type of machine covers a number of parking spots. It has a button or selector for the numbered park you are using. Select the park and pay your money. The display on the machine shows the expiry time for each park. So the council only needs to mark out the parks and install one such machine at each location.
Here for the ride.
<<----- My dream bike.
Reading the title of this thread cracks me up.
As if it's such huge issue that the council needs to target bikes on footpaths.....Gimme a fucken break.
Just picken on the little guy, who discretely parks his bike out of the way and does'nt effect anyone, and keeps a park open for a car, pollutes less and de-congests the road by using the bike in the first place.
Go to war with the council and get to work at 5am, take all the car-parks up with your bikes and leave them there all day, everyday until the council figures out that the bikers were'nt really effecting anyone but those choosing to be upset about it.
Cats land on their feet. Toast lands jamside down.
A cat glued to some jam toast will hover in quantum indecision
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat
Fix a computer and it'll break tomorrow.
Teach its owner to fix it and it'll break in some way you've never seen before.
Fair weather rider
The revenue issue is very simple - Council does not collect revenue from motorcycle parking, either from our on-road spaces or our parking garages, and is not intending to. We do not operate public transport or parking garages and revenue from on-road parking trends upwards, not downwards, over the years. The only way that motorcycles could end up having to pay for parking in public spaces is if the public got so upset with motorcycle riders and the way they are parking that they lobby for the Council to take an even tougher stance on this issue. Whether that happens is entirely up to the riders. I am doing my best to help avoid that situation.
In response to your specific questions:
• How many complaints have been made and over what period?
Probably about 30 to 40 over the past year depending on your definition of "complaint" vs "inquiry" and some being repeated complaints about the same issue from the same person or group. In comparison to other issues, that is quite high (e.g. we used to get that number of complaints about sandwich boards each year but now we only get one or two). In saying that, the quantity is not as important as the substance of the complaint, i.e. pedestrians have the legal right to use the footpath and motorcycles do not, so if we receive a complaint then we must side with the party whose rights we are supposed to protect under the Local Government Act.
• Are complaints available (sanitised) by way of an OIA?
Yes
• How many injuries have been caused to pedestrian’s vs parked bikes?
Not many - these are usually not reported. It may be easier to ask this forum how many people have had their bikes knocked over (I am aware of a couple).
• How often is an audit done of all parking spaces to ensure they meet the MOT and LTSA legislation/ Policy? i.e some examples other than parking on a footpath are;
o near a corner, curve, hill, traffic island or intersection, if it will stop other people from seeing along the road
o on, or closer than 6 metres to, an intersection, unless there are parking spaces or a notice telling you that you can park there
o on, or closer than 6 metres to, the approach side of a pedestrian crossing
o closer than 6 metres to a bus stop marked only by a sign
o in front of, or closer than 1 metre to, a vehicle entrance
o on, or closer than 50 centimetres to, a fire hydrant, unless somebody who can move the vehicle stays with it
o on a yellow circle on the road
All of these are high-risk areas and we would be concerned with anyone parking at such locations. Many have been marked with broken yellow lines. We review the markings usually on an as-needed basis (e.g. in response to complaints or if the adjacent land-use changes). All are monitored in the CBD daily by our wardens and on an as-needed basis in the suburbs.
• Are WCC or Transit going to apply a tariff to vehicles coming into and out of the city?
I am not aware of any such plans. Congestion charging would be a substantial change to how we manage traffic and would require careful legal considerations and possibly even law changes. If any such proposal was raised, it would be publicly consulted on. Consultation was carried out a number of years ago in relation to tolls for Transmission Gully, and this indicated that drivers were not prepared to pay more than about $2 which was not enough to make such a scheme worthwhile (considering the cost to install and operate it).
o Will any Tariff applied be applied to motorcycles?
As for above. In evaluating such a scheme they would probably look at what is done in other cities, and I am aware that often if there is such a charge motorcycles would be exempt or pay less.
• Will WCC or Transit be using Automatic Plate Recognition (APR) cameras to conduct this?
No idea - these days they use RF ID tags attached to vehicles and other such gadgets. Motorcycles only have a plate on the rear so ANPR is typically not a good tool for that. I remember when the first speed cameras came out many years ago, the police commissioner was out with his technical staff to see it being used for the first time. A friend of mine was its first victim - he was on a bike doing about 160km/h as he flew over the crest of the hill. The photo shows his pillion passenger over the top of the rider as he slammed on the anchors. The police realised immediately that they had an awesome photo but no plate, so they pursued & caught him (much further) down the road...
Readers may also be amused to hear that the first person to receive a ticket for exceeding 80km/h in Ngaranga Gorge (the first "variable speed limit" in the country) was the engineer that calculated that 80km/h was the safest maximum speed for that road :-)
• Will WCC be using CCTV ‘safety cameras’ to monitor and electronically issue parking infringement notices?
Funny you should mention that:
http://www.wellington.govt.nz/news/d...em.php?id=3632
We intend to use cameras to address only those infringements that result in traffic safety issues (i.e. not for parking time or fee restrictions - normal wardens will continue to do that). The cameras will likely be self-contained rather than CCTV - we're only using the new City Safety CCTV cameras as a trial to test the technology & processes.
o What are the legalities and privacy issues of this practice if the answer to the above question is ‘Yes’?
No issues if we are only collecting information about the vehicle and not about any people. That is what we are effectively doing already when the parking warden takes a photo of the offending vehicle for evidence. The vehicle's registration plate is public information accessible by anyone through the national vehicle registration database. We intend to do it as overtly as possible (not covertly as was suggested) because the more people are aware of it the less likely they are to offend and the less likely we will need to issue an infringement notice (I'd be happiest if we didn't need to issue any tickets because it means people are obeying the law and not putting others' safety at risk). Current indicators are that the publicity, equipment and operating costs will be substantially greater than any fines we may be collecting from such cameras, which supports that we are doing this to improve safety, not to make money. The accounts will be made publicly available to support this.
Fair weather rider
Not yet. The first step will be two sets of information leaflets distributed to all motorcycle riders over the next few weeks. They are printed but we are awaiting a "fine" (sunny, dry and not-so-windy) day. The first set does not have a map of garages on the back yet as that list is continually growing. The second set will, and will coincide with a poster campaign in shops such as those where you can purchase or hire motorcycles/scooters.
Once that is complete, then we will think about issuing warning notices. I'd first like to see what progress we can make through the publicity campaign.
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