City’s Parking Needs

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29832, 26 May 1962, Page 10

City’s Parking Needs

The magnitude of the parking problem facing the Christchurch City Council

was measured by the council’s traffic engineer (Mr H. E. Surtees) when he told the Institution of Engineers that every year for the next 18 years 450 off-street spaces would have to be provided. The problem is largely a physical one, since parking facilities (with the help of £ 1000 a week from parking meters) will pay for themselves through the fees charged users. The cheapest way to meet the increase in demand might seem the provision of surface parking lots; but by 1980 that woul l absorb 90 acres of land. The city must already use about 40 acres for parking; to increase the area to 130 acres is out of the question. That would leave available for buildings in the central business district no more than 300

acres, which would be far too little to hold the attractions that bring motorists from outer areas. The stage would eventually be reached where the city would have ample car parks and few cars to put in them. Plainly the City Council must build upwards, though sites may be used temporarily as surface parking lots. This fact emphasises the wisdom of the present council’s decision to spend £248,000 on a 400-car building at the corner of Manchester and Gloucester streets and to use another site in Lichfield street. It also shows that the council must do something like this every year unless there is some quite unexpected revolution in citizens’ behaviour. The early years of the programme will test the skill of the council in organising the giant investment necessary; the later years its foresight in acquiring sites.