The council doesn’t seem particularly pleased with the news yesterday that they are planning at migrating the parking needs of motorcyclists into the hands of the private sector. They issued a press release yesterday to try and save some grace…
Wellington City Council has no intention of removing existing free motorcycle parking from the streets in the Wellington CBD, contrary to a media report today.
Mayor Celia Wade-Brown says a review of motorcycle parking policy is in the early stages. The Council is still talking to the motorcycle community and no decisions have been made.
After a lot of huff and puff around statistics, and the council’s desire not to annoy anyone, the Council portfolio leader on motorcycling actually gets a word in…
The Council’s Walking, Cycling, Motorcycling and Safety Portfolio Leader, Councillor Bryan Pepperell, says the issue is about space, increased demand, fairness and the interests of ratepayers.
“We have started looking at a number of options to address this challenge,” says Cr Pepperell.
Cr Pepperell will be leading a roundtable discussion in February.
Heh.
They have totally tied themselves in knotts. Realising they are on the wrong side of this argument, at the last minute they’ve changed their stance. Now their “roundtable discussion” is going to be pretty limited as many of the potential solutions won’t even be considered.
WCC Watch 
If anything council should be creating incentives for people to use lower polluting vehicles. Introducing a charging model that saw Hummer’s be charged $50 per hour while a Toyota Prius would be charged $4 an hour makes more sense to me.
Scooters and motorcycles should maintain their free status until Council has worked out a comprehensive solution to parking, rather than ad hoc changes which create issues.