At a recent local Economic Summit attended by several business owners organised by the Inner West Council, there was no mention to prioritise a planning strategy to increase parking in support of economic growth along the many commercial main streets.
A Council representative expressed to the group that their focus is more on reducing main street traffic speeds to 40km/hr, utilising kerbside for outdoor hospitality use and beautifying spaces for pedestrian access. Even further wanting to activate certain street areas with pop up musicians all in the hope that this will generate more local wealth and job opportunities in the Inner West.
With Council’s recent success of its pilot Special Entertainment Precinct on Enmore Road, they are still committed to reviewing parking as to encourage visitors to use more public and active transport, with the intention to increase ranger patrols ensuring greater compliance with parking restrictions.
This of course is a devastating approach especially working against those small businesses who depend more on attracting consumers living out in the greater Sydney areas, who find driving a car being their only option available to them.
The Council really needs to be taking a more thoughtful approach about design, location, and quantity of parking that can be managed without placing so much anxiety amongst affected businesses.
Even with the recent explosion of the use of e-commerce that can provide another income stream for many businesses to survive, there is a real need now to create priority parking for employees, couriers, tradies, and extra loading zones especially for bulky deliveries to businesses on the main streets.
It would be an asset and value add especially to those empty eyesore spaces, making them more attractive to be leased to better quality tenants or even attracting more private investment into the area.
Such an approach further helps to improve the variety of businesses, especially when retail trade in the Inner West is the biggest employer! Council does need a better approach as their current parking policy does not suit all.
Mobility trends certainly are changing the way people move around, especially within our younger generation who may forego car ownership and the need for parking.
More incentives to encourage this trend would be to create secure and well-lit corrals for e-bike and e-scooter users, and even consider de-bundling residential car spaces to bring down some costs of living for owners and renters.
This in turn can increase a demand for more alternative transport options such as car-share, mini-bus shuttle services and even perhaps prepare the Inner West for the advent of futuristic autonomous vehicles – all needing of course pickup and drop off zones best placed on the main streets to bring more visitors closer to retail businesses.
Hopefully our politicians start thinking harder about opening the discussions around public parking, as just pushing for mass public transport solutions alone is not a complete answer for future local economic growth.
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