A decision on parking near Ballarat’s hospital precinct has signaled massive future changes in the way residents commute to the city for work.
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At an ordinary Ballarat City Council meeting on Wednesday night, significant changes were approved for Webster Street.
The amount of all day and four hour parking on the street will be increased, in order to alleviate the stress on nearby streets without parking restrictions.
In a report tabled to the meeting, council officers said areas of two and three hour parking on Webster Street were under-utilised. The street has 33 different timed parking segments, with 19 slated to transition to four hour or all day parking under the new proposal.
But in a radical move, council will now also consider options for residents with no driveway access.
Council officers will also be directed to investigate and instigate more paid parking, as well as considering a three-hour parking limit for the entire precinct, with residents to be supplied all day parking permits.
Central Ward councillor Mark Harris said that while many still view Ballarat as a “large country town”, the reality is a ring of parking distress around the city’s centre.
“We’ve intensified this pressure on the central business district, and although we’ve tried to put different zones within precincts, you get this ring and it just gets further and further out.”
“There can be no winners in this, but the losers in this discussion are these central workers who will have to put money in a meter, walk from further out or find another way to get in, like cycling.”
Every action has a reaction, so we will push that issue further out into different streets.
- Terry Demeo, City of Ballarat director of infrastructure and environment
During meeting, Ballarat mayor Samantha McIntosh noted that different option would need to be looked at, including options for parking on Creswick Road and at the Lyons Street North Loreto College site.
“Govhub will put another degree of pressure on us,” she said. “We need to look at it from a strategic manner.”
Construction on GovHub at the Civic Hall site is set to be completed by 2020. The building is set to house 1000 public servants in total, including the 400 which already work in Ballarat.
City of Ballarat’s director of infrastructure and environment Terry Demeo told the meeting that submissions to the review had been pretty consistent in “pinch point streets”.
“Every action has a reaction, so we will push that issue further out into different streets,” Mr Demeo said. “As submittors have said, it will fix their issue but it does not fix the full issue.”
“This is not a static issue. We will face a Melbourne approach, timed parking with heavy enforcement over a longer period of time.”
A report will be prepared for the May 2 ordinary council meeting on new parking suggestions for the area.