Managing parking is a challenge for all large cities, but until recently there has been very little meaningful public debate about on-street parking in Brisbane.

As our city has grown from a large country town into a thriving city at the heart of a region of more than 3 million people, the pressure on parking has continued to increase.  The city’s first parking meter was introduced in 1957, with around 8,000 metered spaces in place by the mid 1960s. More than half a century later, Brisbane still has a similar number of metered on-street spaces – 8,233 to be precise.

In 2014, competing uses for our limited on-street parking are placing greater demands than ever before on kerb space, with taxi zones, loading zones, disability parking bays, bus zones and motorcycle parking also vying for prime locations.

With this in mind, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk recently announced the establishment of the Brisbane Parking Taskforce, with the mission of assessing how we can best manage on-street parking into the future.

The Taskforce is taking a deeper look at this critical issue. My view is that we should be aiming for "best practice" in parking management to reflect our New World City aspirations. Brisbane must learn from the experience of other comparable cities to achieve better social, economic and environmental outcomes for our city.

Until now, most public debate about parking has been hijacked by taunts of “revenue raising” or “streets paved with gold”. These are not only inaccurate claims and unable to stand-up to scrutiny, but they also completely distract from the broader issues.

Parking-related revenue makes up a miniscule proportion of total Council income. Furthermore, every cent collected by Council gets quickly re-invested back into the local community through park and footpath improvements.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the Brisbane CBD Bicycle User Group (CBD BUG) – a non-aligned, grass roots organisation of more than 700 members – said in their public submission to the Parking Taskforce:

“This (parking) revenue is insignificant in the broader context of the total BCC budget and the CBD BUG is disappointed the BCC Opposition has taken an opportunistic approach to the issue of car parking infringement fines - by decrying the revenue raised from parking infringements and describing Brisbane’s streets as being paved with gold, instead of showing leadership and dealing with the matter in a balanced, considered manner.”

And the CBD BUG aren’t alone in their views.

The members of the Parking Taskforce are currently absorbing the feedback from more than 1000 public submissions and there is an incredible diversity of views. The vast majority of submitters realise that parking is not a one-dimensional issue. Interestingly, we received a large number of submissions about suburban parking problems and many of these submissions – far from decrying parking fines – are calling for increased enforcement.

The following submission comment about school parking really hit the nail on the head: “The self-centred and dangerous behaviour of many people is on show every school-day by the manner in which they flout signage and rules while driving in and around their children’s school…The overwhelming majority of children are now driven to school because of parental concerns about children's safety, while through their inappropriate driving behaviour, parents place the safety of other parents' children at risk.”

This perspective on school parking highlights that parking restrictions exist for good reason. Whether it’s a 2-minute passenger loading zone, a bus zone, a yellow no-stopping line or a disability-parking bay, a motorist’s decision to ignore parkingrestrictions can - and does - negatively affect other people.

Even the common offence of overstaying a parking time limit brings a range of unintended consequences. International studies indicate that up to 30 per cent of traffic congestion in business districts is caused by motorists circulating streets looking forparking. In other words, overstaying the limit by 10 minutes will force another motorist to cruise the block for a further 10 minutes, adding to congestion, burning extra fuel and generating considerable frustration. And that’s not all. The nearby small businesses that rely on regular turnover of parking spaces also suffer the opportunity cost of lost business every time a motorist overstays. This so-called "victimless crime" of "overstaying" is not only adding to congestion, CO2 emissions and road rage, it is also hurting small businesses.

The fundamental difficulty with on-street parking is that it’s a shared community asset for which demand regularly exceeds supply. When we consider that most vehicles are driven for a small part of each day, it becomes clear why parking is in such high demand. Research conducted overseas reveals that, on average, cars sit unused for more than 90 per cent of each day -parked at home, at work, at the shops, or at countless other places, for almost 22 hours per day.

Cities around the world choose to manage their valuable parking spaces in several ways, including with restrictions, time limits, charges, or a combination of all three. These are balanced with important decisions about whether kerb space should be allocated for alternative uses such as bus zones, taxi zones, loading zones, clearways, car-share schemes or bicycle lanes.

Parking meters are certainly not new to Brisbane, but like most cities around the world, they tend to attract controversy wherever they are used. Sadly, opposition to metered parking is seldom based on hard data. When extended meter hours were introduced in the US city of Seattle in 2011, many inner-city restaurant owners predicted it would hurt their business. Sound familiar?  A look at income figures for Seattle restaurants following the parking changes shows precisely the opposite, with restaurant gross receipts rising by up to 9 per cent in some precincts. By increasing turnover in on-street parking, and ensuring that more spaces are available for customers, parking meters can be an effective tool to increase patronage for local business.

After almost 60 years of metered parking in Brisbane, today motorists pay $4.40 per hour for prime on-street parking in the CBD – only 40 cents more than they did a decade ago. In comparison, motorists pay up to $7 per hour in Sydney and up to $5.50 per hour in Melbourne for CBD on-street parking.

So what are other cities doing to better manage parking? There are plenty of innovative examples around the world, but San Francisco deserves a special mention. The vehicle-dominated Californian city has had its fair share of parking problems, but is now seen as a world leader in "smart" parking. Their SFpark project trialled a technology-driven management of parking using in-ground sensors to provide real-time occupancy data about on-street parking spaces.  The occupancy data is then used to generate demand-responsive pricing, where meters adjust payment rates up or down to help achieve a target occupancy level of 60 to 80 per cent. If any particular area has under-utilised parking, the price is lowered until usage increases. On the other hand, if a space is always occupied the price is increased until the occupancy levels reduce to below 80 per cent.

The results of SFpark have been remarkable. The amount of time most people reported that it took to find a parking space decreased by 43 per cent, and the amount of time that streets were too full to find parking decreased by as much as 45 per cent in some areas. Trial areas also saw a 30 per cent decrease in unnecessary miles travelled by vehicles circulating looking for car parking. Importantly, making it easier for drivers to pay for parking also made it easier to avoid parking tickets; in SFpark areas, 23 per cent fewer parking meter-related infringements were issued. Finally, as a result of the dynamic pricing, average on-street meter charges dropped by 4 per cent as a result of the SFpark project.

The experience of San Francisco has already prompted other cities – such as our own sister city of Auckland – to consider implementing similar parking technology. While I’m not going to pre-empt the findings of our Parking Taskforce, Brisbane residents can be sure that we are closely examining how many other cities are managing parking as part of our review. This information, together with the feedback from more than 1000 submissions will help Brisbane make some real improvements to the way we manage our city’s parking spaces for the benefit of the community.

Adrian Schrinner is Brisbane’s Deputy Mayor and is the chairman of the Parking Taskforce