The Courier

REVEALED: Get ready to pay for Ballarat’s sweeping parking changes

REVEALED: Get ready to pay for Ballarat’s sweeping parking changes
REVEALED: Get ready to pay for Ballarat’s sweeping parking changes

A bold new City of Ballarat plan to overhaul parking in Ballarat’s CBD will remove time restrictions but increase the amount of paid parking. 

Under the plan, the city’s CBD will be sliced into three distinct zones with different prices and operation times. Motorists in the inner CBD will pay $2 per hour for parking, with 50 cents per hour in the outer zone. 

There will be no time limit on how long you can stay in a park or in the same zone, with the implementation of a mobile parking app removing the need to feed the meter. But eight new pay stations will be created, with 130 retrofitted parking meters across the CBD.

The first 10 minutes in any car space will be free. 

The number of paid parks in Ballarat’s CBD will balloon to around 8,500 if the proposal is adopted, with the new zoning creating 4,300 new formal spaces.

  • ZONE 1 – INNER CBD: $2 per hour, between 9.30am and 7pm, Monday to Saturday. 
  • ZONE 2 – MIDDLE CBD: $1 per hour, between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. 
  • ZONE 3 – OUTER CBD: 50c per hour, between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. 

There will also be changes to the city’s residential parking permit regime. While households in areas affected by paid parking will get their first permit free, they are likely to pay between $100 and $200 for subsequent permits. 

The sweeping proposal will be considered at a special council meeting on May 31. 

You can view the proposed changes here.

If approved at the meeting, the plan will go through community consultation, before returning to the chamber on July 4 for councillors to consider.

If adopted, the full plan and parking app would then be implemented across the CBD within 12 months, with the hospital and university precinct north of the city centre paying for parking by October this year. 

A new off-street car park will be created in Creswick Road, with 300 spaces to be put on a vacant block of land next to Officeworks.

The new off-street spaces are part of the state government’s $2 million contribution to council to create 1,000 new car spaces, in order to cater for imminent influx of public servants for the Civic Hall GovHub redevelopment. 

The city says there is currently 10,000 workers in the CBD, estimated to increase by 2,000 in the next two years.

Public car parks next to the Bridge Mall and at Central Square which provide two hours of free parking will retain free parking. Parking will remain free for those with a disability parking permit. 

City of Ballarat are currently calling for expressions of interest for off-street parking providers. 

City of Ballarat made more than $5.9 million revenue from parking management in the last financial year, including parking fees and fines.