Auckland parking costs to increase from next week

Aucklanders will be paying more for on-street parking from next week, as Auckland Transport announces its revised charges.

From 28 August, parking on-street and at Auckland Transport-managed car parks will increase by $1 an hour.

In the most expensive zones of the city centre, drivers will be charged $6 per hour for the first 2 hours and $11 per hour after that.

The changes came after a clear direction from Mayor Wayne Brown in his Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport (AT) last December.

In the letter, Brown stressed the importance of AT prioritising affordability and value for money, while exploring options to increase external income and reduce reliance on rates funding.

"One key area Auckland Transport should investigate is increasing revenue from parking," the mayor wrote.

"Currently Auckland Transport is undercutting market rates for parking, which is not appropriate in this environment."

AT said the revised parking charges were the first region-wide changes to parking charges in over a decade, since it was formed in November 2010.

Service delivery executive general manager Andrew Allen said these changes bring parking charges more in line with public transport fares, which were reviewed annually.

"We have had strong feedback from many Aucklanders that if we are reviewing the cost of our public transport fares each year, we should be doing the same for our parking charges," Allen said.

"These changes are also consistent with Auckland Transport's Room to Move strategy which outlines how Auckland's management of parking can help improve the efficiency of our roads, while keeping parking options available for Aucklanders who need them.

The extra revenue generated each year would go towards covering AT's operating expenses, "including for running Auckland's public transport network and continuing to deliver road safety programmes," Allen said.

'AT making better use of those levers is a good thing,' advocate says

Transport commentator and the editor of the Greater Auckland blog, Matt Lowrie, said it made sense to raise the fees.

"Changing parking prices can be quite emotional, but we have a financial shortfall, and we need to look how people travel.

"If we don't, we have increased congestion, we have increased demand so AT making better use of those levers is a good thing."

Lowrie said these changes would balance out those being made to public transport fares across the years, because this was the first regional-level increase for more than a decade.

He believed it would also help reduce traffic on already overcrowded motorways.

"Because we keep making public transport more expensive and leaving parking prices unchanged, that helps encourage people to drive more rather than take more spatially efficient modes of transport to help free out congestion and improve safety.

"If parking is expensive, I'd be looking into cheaper and more efficient ways to get around."

Seeing the changes were made swiftly was good, he said.

"It shows that they are able to make these changes relatively quickly, where in the past they tried to argue that there was a long and complicated process to do those types of changes.

"AT is showing that they can move quickly if they want to."

What is changing from Monday

• The cost of on-street parking across Auckland will increase by $1 an hour.
• Hourly charges for parking at all AT-managed carparks will also increase by $1.
• The weekday price cap for the Downtown Car Park, on Customs Street West, will decrease from $40 to $24, to address the low utilisation of the carpark during weekdays.
• Off-peak price caps for the Downtown Car Park would go up from $10 to $15 for evening and weekend day-long parking.

For more details, see Auckland Transport's website.