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Parking strategy [PDF 529KB]
Residential areas and parking spillover
Parking is an essential consideration when creating an attractive residential environment. Some residential areas within the city have been unable to accommodate the increase in neighbourhood cars due to the design and limited size of the properties, and rely on the street for additional parking.
Residential areas that are close to commercial centres, sporting or cultural facilities often have non-resident vehicles parking on residential streets. This parking spillover restricts the amount of parking available to residents and their visitors. The ‘free’ parking in neighbouring streets also attracts people unwilling to pay for parking closer to their destination.
The strategy seeks to:
- manage and provide on-street parking to meet the needs of residents and their visitors
- minimise non-resident and parking spillover on residential streets
- enforce parking restrictions
Recreation and leisure
There are many opportunities in Christchurch City for recreational and leisure activities. Providing parking for some of these activities can be challenging. Equally challenging can be accommodating parking for large one-off events, which can create extra congestion on the surrounding roads, disrupting the flow of traffic before, during and after the event.
Parking around some larger reserves is becoming a problem, particularly on weekends when sporting activities sometimes attract more vehicles than there are available parking spaces. Parking may spill over into adjoining residential areas and illegal on and off-street parking occurs. Road safety problems increase with vehicles slowing down to pull in or out of the traffic.
The strategy seeks to:
- manage on-street parking to minimise impacts on residential streets
- require recreational facilities to provide on-site parking for all modes
- promote shared parking facilities
Kerbside priority
Where the demand for parking exceeds the supply of spaces, the strategy proposes allocating priority for different parking purposes based upon the adjoining land use activity. For example, in residential areas the parking priority is proposed in the following order: residential car parking; high occupancy vehicles, in particular buses; visitor car parking; parking for people with disabilities; loading zones and commuter parking.
In the Central City area, kerbside parking priority is proposed in this order: high occupancy vehicles; tourism vehicles; loading zones; parking for people with disabilities; short-stay private vehicles parking for business and retail needs including taxis; resident and visitor car parking and commuter parking.
