Article: Melbourne's car-park price shock

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From the Melbourne Age click here!

Melbourne's car-park price shock

Melbourne's car-park price shock
Mex Cooper
July 26, 2011 - 11:45AM

Melbourne motorists are paying more than drivers in London, New York and Tokyo for daily car parking in the city centre, according to a new global survey.

The CBD's daily car-parking rates were found to be the third-highest in the world at a median of $66 a day.

Melbourne ranked behind only Oslo at $85 and Copenhagen at $70 and just surpassed Sydney at $64 in Colliers International 2011 parking rate survey.
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RACV public policy general manager Brian Negus said many Melbourne commuters took advantage of early-bird deals, that were not included in the survey, which charge motorists between about $11 and $18 a day.

Mr Negus said it was short-term users such as shoppers, business people visiting the city for meetings, or tradespeople who were being stung with excessive hourly rates that can be as high as $24.

"The short-term parkers especially get a raw deal with the rate for one, two, three hours in excess of $40 or $50," he said.

"They get charged over-the-top prices compared to longer-term parking in the city that have early-bird rates when they are the people that should be encouraged to use public transport."

At least one Exhibition Street car park charges $88 for a stay of more than four hours.

But Melbourne transport expert Paul Mees labelled the survey "nonsense".

The RMIT transport policy lecturer said the survey had used hourly rates as the benchmark rather than looking at the cheapest deals on offer.

"If you drive in at 8am and pay an hourly rate for eight hours it would cost a fortune but no one does," he said.

The strong Australian dollar also meant local prices appeared more expensive than overseas, Dr Mees said. He said while high parking prices contributed to two-thirds of CBD workers catching public transport to work, outside the city centre the cost dropped as did public transport use.

In the CBD, 62 per cent of journeys to work were via public transport and 28 per cent in a car, according to the most recent census, Dr Mees said.

Beyond the inner city, car use more than doubled to 58 per cent and public transport dropped to 31 per cent.

In the suburbs, he said public transport dived to six per cent and car use rose to 86 per cent.

"What that shows you is that without the deterrent of expensive car parking, public transport is so unattractive that it doesn't get many voluntary users," Dr Mees said.

Mr Negus said Melbourne's high short-term parking prices were a result of businesses taking advantage of high demand.

"You'd have to say, there's a fair amount of opportunism there," he said.

Colliers surveyed the majority of covered or underground CBD car parks.

The survey found when it came to monthly parking rates, London, Zurich and Hong Kong were the most expensive.

Perth was the seventh-most expensive city, Sydney the ninth and Melbourne the eleventh for monthly parking rates.