28-9-06
Media
Release
Greens Cautious About Parking Lot in the Spot
How
many cars are enough?
Randwick's Green Councillors are asking
the question as alarmed residents called for consultation over a
Council proposal to boost the parking capacity of the local Spot
commercial center.
Last Tuesday night the Council voted to
continue talking about the idea with the Department of Housing who
have offered to provide 86 public car spaces as part of a development
project on the Brigidine Convent site.
Greens Councillor
Murray Matson said afterwards,
ﾓSome
residents are concerned that the car park proposal will simply
attract more cars to the Spot to the benefit of local businesses
rather than residents.ﾔ
Councillors
were informed prior to Tuesday's vote that on Monday night the Spot
Precinct Committee had resolved to call for more consultation between
Council and residents on the idea.
Cr Matson commented,
ﾓThe
Greens are keen to exhaust all opportunities for community
consultation following the harsh criticism Council copped over the
funding proposed for the Heffron Park upgrade and the now abandoned
Clovelly Resident Preferred Parking Scheme.ﾔ
The
Spot area has seen sustained tension between residents and business
owners over parking issues for at least a decade.
Cr Matson
states that the Greens favour parking solutions such as the recently
implemented Spot Resident Preferred Parking Scheme, which reserves
existing parking spaces on the streets for residents.
He
expanded,
ﾓSome
Councillors assume that what is good for businesses is automatically
also in the best interest of residents. As urban planners we need to
re think that assumption.
There is a further naive assumption
that the best way to reduce a car produced problem is to build new
parking lots, but this can just serve to attract more cars to a
commercial area.ﾔ
Cr
Matson stated that many countries around the world had participated
in last Friday's (22-9-06) ﾓCar
Free Dayﾔ
by
seeking to restrict the number of cars moving through cities.
(http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/cf_home.htm)
CONTACT:
Randwick City Deputy Mayor, Greens Councillor Murray Matson
___________________________________________________________
Press
Release ﾖ
Sept.
10, 2006
Carbusters
Magazine first called for a World Carfree Day on September 22, 2000.
Today Sept. 22 is celebrated in 1,500 cities in 40 countries with
carfree festivals, bicycle demonstrations, street closures and
permanent changes to make cities more environmentally and socially
sustainable. Each year in late September, streets are closed to cars
and opened to childrenﾒs
games, neighborhood parties, street theater and outdoor cafes,
allowing people to see their cities the way they could be with fewer
cars.
World Carfree Networkﾒs
activities this September will specifically focus on street
conversions. The network's member groups all over the world will be
working with municipalities to convert streets, intersections and
parking areas into spaces for people to use for recreation, commerce,
social life and education. Dreams of healthier, cleaner and more
sociable communities will be made tangible for a day, and plans for
permanent changes to strengthen walking, cycling and public transport
will be unveiled in numerous of cities.
On Sept 22, World
Carfree Network (WCN) will reveal the results of its international
Street Conversion Competition at the Towards Carfree Cities
Conference in Bogot? Colombia. The competition will compare
blueprints from top professional and citizen urban designers
throughout the world, depicting ideas for converting car-oriented
spaces into multi-use, carfree urban spaces. The winning designs will
be those that successfully concentrate destinations, reduce travel
needs, create a sense of place and community, minimize the amount of
space devoted solely to transport, use space efficiently and increase
the quality of life. The competition will be judged by a panel of
conference participants.
Other planned events range from
educational carfree day events in Seoul, South Korea to a street fair
in Portland, Oregon, which will convert a small central street into
an area for art, music and games. As many as 500 cities around the
world will hold Critical Mass bicycle rides, which are cycling
celebrations directed by participants. Budapest, Hungary has
previously seen upwards of 30,000 cyclists participating in the ride
and this year the city is set to break records yet again. World
Carfree Day also coincides with the European Commissionﾒs
Mobility Week, which this year has the goal of combating climate
change.
As a hub of the growing international alternative
transport movement, World Carfree Network provides networking support
and a plethora of online resources to grassroots groups and
municipalities alike, from carfree day promotional materials to
statistics and action reports from around the world. The network
serves as a clearinghouse of information for urban design and
transportation professionals and nonprofit groups, as well as a
center for cross-border coordination and planning for World Carfree
Day and related events. The network is assisting grassroots groups
around the world with activities ranging from direct actions
(painting bike lanes; guerilla gardening; and free bicycle rickshaw
taxi services) to family-oriented fun (community bike rides, street
theater and potluck breakfasts in the middle of the road).
For
further information from World Carfree Network and to set up
interviews with transport and urban-development experts contact Arie
Farnam at the International Coordination Center at ++420 608 819 276
or afarnam@worldcarfree.net. Also, see the networkﾑs
carfree day activities at www.worldcarfree.net/wcfd/.