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Brisbane residents are campaigning to change street parking restrictions in a bid to improve traffic flow, parking availability and safety.
A Brisbane council is calling for an overhaul to the road rule preventing drivers from parking on nature strips, arguing that doing so would aid traffic flow and improve parking availability.
RELATED: Survey shows motorists don’t know these simple parking laws
According to the Brisbane Times, residents in the Brisbane City Council area have received 5256 fines and 2282 warnings for parking on nature strips in the past financial year alone, with the offence attracting a potential fine of $116.
The crackdown has triggered a petition by the Brisbane Verge Parking Petition Action Group, a newly founded community group, who say that the housing crisis has led to an increased number of people per household, leaving them nowhere to park their cars.
“The housing crisis has led to an increase in the number of individuals per household as share housing increases, families consolidate and adult children delay leaving or return home, resulting in more vehicles per household. This often means that the available off-street parking availability is less than the number of vehicles per household,” the petition states.
The petition calls for the consideration of a bylaw already implemented by the nearby Logan City Council, which allows motorists to park on the median or nature strip as long as they do not block a footpath, mailbox or fire hydrants, and leave a gap of at least 1.2 metres for pedestrian access.
The petition, which currently has over 250 signatures, goes on to explain that parking further away from home is a danger during a heightened time of violence against women and argues that parking on the street also hinders the smooth flow of traffic.
Additionally, it states “The current parking restrictions on streets narrower than six metres severely limit access for emergency vehicles, potentially delaying essential responses”.
Parking on a nature strip is against the Road Safety Road Rule 197, which states “A driver must not stop on a bicycle path, footpath, shared path or dividing strip, or a nature strip adjacent to a length of road in a built-up area”.
The rule gets even more complex if you’re parking across from another car. Under Road Rule 208, you must leave three metres of space between your car and other parked vehicles, median strips or solid painted lines. With streets getting narrower, you could be susceptible to a fine no matter how you park.
“If the road has a continuous dividing line or a dividing strip, the driver must position the vehicle at least three metres from the continuous dividing line or dividing strip, unless otherwise indicated by information on or with a parking control sign,” the rule states.
A change to these parking rules isn’t entirely unprecedented. Councils in New South Wales and Victoria have already come up with a surprising solution to the lack of on-street parking in densely populated areas, by moving designated parking spaces onto footpaths to ease congestion on narrow inner-city streets.
“These [parking spaces] were implemented as some streets are very constrained and there were issues such as insufficient footpath width, informal footpath parking, pedestrians walking on the road and insufficient road width for emergency vehicle access,” a spokesperson for Sydney’s Inner West Council told 9news.com.au.
These kinds of car spaces are also in use in Melbourne, where they’re employed in one particular street in the inner-city suburb of Abbotsford – albeit with a little more room left over for pedestrians.
The markings have been in place in Abbotsford since 2011, when they were implemented following unanimous agreement from residents of that street after their parked cars were damaged by other vehicles passing by.
What are your thoughts about parking on the nature strip? Let us know in the comments below.
The post Petition to change ‘severely limiting’ parking restrictions in Brisbane appeared first on Drive.
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