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Parking fees anger commuters

Staff ReporterStirling Times

Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute Jemma Green said she supported charging for parking, as long as sufficient bus services were provided.

‘I think we need to get away from the model of building evermore car parks, we need to move to providing more rapid and frequent bus services,’ she said.

‘Building car parks is a really inefficient use of really prime land at train stations because you get a lot of foot traffic there, it’s an optimal place to put retail and commercial offerings.’

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Ms Green said when compared to the cost of driving into the city, two dollars a day was quite affordable.

‘At the moment they’re proposing to charge two dollars a day which is a small amount of money when compared against the three or four dollars an hour you’ll have to pay when parking in the city and then when you factor into that the money people have to spend on petrol to drive’.

Retired engineer Nick Suess said he’s angered by the decision and argued people who weren’t fortunate enough to have parking bays in the city were not the ones who should be forced to find more money to get to work.

North Metropolitan Region MLA and Opposition transport spokesman Ken Travers said Perth’s commuters had been let down by the State Government’s decision to charge for parking.

‘Hard-working commuters who wish to do the right thing by using public transport will be charged around $460 per year extra in parking fees at train stations, that is if they can find a place to park,’ Mr Travers said.

‘It’s bad news for public transport commuters who will suffer huge blowouts to household budgets.’