Parking Building Hours Criticised

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31226, 25 November 1966, Page 14

Parking Building Hours Criticised

Dissatisfaction at the operations of the Christchurch City Council’s Lichfield street parking building was expressed at the meeting of the council of the Automobile Association (Canterbury) last evening.

It was decided that the general manager (Mr E. S. Palliser should inquire into the matter and into the possibility of the building remaining open longer. Mr G. Harvey said the building was ostensibly run by the City Council, and yet a private individual seemed to have a complete say on how it operated. At the Manchester street parking building there was 24-hour parking, but when he had been allotted a parking space at the Lichfield street building he had found that the private individual said it would close at 6.15 p.m. on week nights and 9. 15 p.m. on Friday evenings. At these times he closed the gates. The man had said it did not pay to keep staff on after these hours. “I think it is absurd for a parking building to close at these hours. It is a crazy imposition,” Mr Harvey said. “How can any businessman say he is going to move his car by 6.15 p.m. on a week night, or a shopper move his car by 9.15 p.m. on a Friday night?”

Mr Harvey said that to some extent the building had been built with parking meter money, and the pub-

lie were entitled to the use of it.

Mr A. I. R. Jamieson said he thought part of the reason for the hours might be that the building was incomplete. Even if this was the case, reasonable hours should be operated. Mr Harvey said the motorist paid the same for a permanent parking space in the Lichfield building as for a permanent space in the Manchester street building. Yet the space in the Manchester street building was available 24 hours a day and the space in the Lichfield building was available for only about a third of this.