Brisbane park‘n’ride woes

The City of Brisbane seems to be having a few issues with its Park‘n’Ride system.

We recently posted an article on the introduction of paid parking at the Westfield Chermside mall, a move by Westfield to stop commuters from using their facilities as a free park and ride car park. The result was an overflow of cars onto the nearby residential streets.

Local and state government representatives have advised commuters that they can use a makeshift space near the Carindale bus interchange.  According to the Brisbane Times, the government is arguing over whether signs should be installed to turn the space into an official park’n’ride site, whilst at the same time rejecting a public petition campaigning for an official facility, arguing that the area was already well served by bus feeder services.

Meanwhile, according to the Courier Mail, Brisbane City Council is stepping up parking enforcement around train stations, with more than 7,000 fines issued in the nearby streets throughtout 2011. The Lord Mayor Graham Quirk claims that the high level of illegal parking around the train stations is due to the state government’s refusal to provide more park’n’ride facilities, particularly within 10km of the CBD. The state government in turn blamed the Lord Mayor, claiming that the parkers are getting ‘caught in the Lord Mayor’s web of parking meters’. They claim that building park’n’ride facilities closer to the CBD would create ‘traffic chaos’, increase traffic, clog streets, box buses into gridlock, and make public transport unusable.

We hope that Brisbane will be able to solve its park’n’ride and rail system issues for the good of all of their people. One thing is for sure, parking and transport planning are two sides of the same coin!