Paid parking has been scrapped from a new $7.4 million Cherry Street carpark in Werribee’s CBD – for now.
Wyndham council voted on Monday night to charge no parking fees at the single-level 150-space carpark, which will be built on the former Werribee Hyundai site and two adjoining sites and is scheduled to open early next year.
As reported in April, plans seen by Star Weekly show two parking ticket machines for the site, which will eventually be turned into a multi-storey carpark.
But the council decided against implementing paid parking “to maintain consistency with the management of the other off-street public carparks in the Werribee City Centre”.
However, this situation could change once the council’s Werribee City Centre Parking Strategy, compiled by its officers, is released.
Cr Peter Maynard said that ultimately it would be up to councillors to decide on the future of paid parking in Werribee’s CBD.
“It would have to be an extremely strong argument that would even start to convince me to consider that metered parking is warranted in this city,” he said.
“Should some type of paid parking be introduced in multi-storey parking facilities? Possibly. This has yet to be decided, but I have no doubt [it] will be influenced by expressions of interest received by the council.
“The council alone cannot build these facilities but will have to undertake such developments in partnership with private developers.”
Parking strategy postponed
The council voted to postpone the release of its parking strategy until it completes an expressions-of-interest process for the Cherry Street carpark and redevelopments of the existing Gateway carpark on Synnot Street and Riverbend carpark on Comben Drive, which will increase the number of off-street spaces.
Stage one of the Cherry Street car- park will include 80 spaces exclusively for business permit-holders and 40 for general parking. Permit-holders will gain an extra 40 spaces once the carpark is made multi-storey.
Cr Gautam Gupta expressed his concern that only 40 spots would be available to the general public.
“What if there were permit parking spots that are empty? That would be very bad in an area where we already have a shortage of parking,” he said.
The council is maintaining its ban – in place since February – on new business parking permits in the Werribee CBD. Employees without permits must move their cars every couple of hours.
A council report reveals 4237 parking infringement notices were issued in Wyndham from July to September this year, with motorists forking out $445,982.
The total from this three-month period is almost half the number of infringements issued for the entire 2014-15 period, when council handed out 11,561 fines.
