Peakhour Parking on Busy Roads
June 7, 2007 by Anthony Crawford
Each afternoon, I sit needlessly in a queue of traffic for at least 20 minutes because four or five cars choose to park in the left hand lane of a major through road. You see, the road in question is a four-lane road which has effectively been cut to two lanes, due to occasional parking on both sides of the road.
I don’t know what the cost of a 2km stretch of road is, but you would think it would be well over a million bucks. So why does the RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) allow expensive roads to be turned into car parks for the chosen few, in peak hour?
I might add, there are no units on this street, just houses which all have their own driveways and/or garages.
I went through the torturous task of calling a government authority, and after no less than ten transfers to different departments, each requiring my complaint to be retold, I finally got on to someone who said that it would be too difficult to ask these few residents to keep the road clear during afternoon peakhour.
Oh, they also said that they had not noticed any queues on this particular road. Yeh, right! Perhaps they did their research after 10pm when they were paid a loading on top of their weekly earnings.
- by Anthony
Print it: 
Sounds like you are using a residential street as a throughway. “I might add, there are no units on this street, just houses which all have their own driveways and/or garages.”
If I were visiting one of those houses during peak hour, where do you suggest I park?
As I said Gerhard, the street in question is a major through road connecting to a six-lane road, so its extremely busy in the afternoons with shoppers and school pick up drivers.
Sydney is littered with major throughroads that happen to be residential streets, but thankfully, most are clearways in peakhour periods and require visitors to either park in driveways or in side streets of which there are sufficient on this particular road.
Los Angeles, where the car is king, has had no parking on many suburban streets for over 30 years, the reason – roads cost millions/billions of dollars and are primarily built to carry traffic – not parking! We have parking stations, driveways and garages for that, Gerhard.
Anthony
I know where you are coming from, on the return trip to Cronulla, there is a 3 lane highway – two lanes turn right, one turns left. There is always one or two cars parked on the side which forces drivers wanting to turn left to merge into the centre lane with people wanting to turn right. It can cause traffic delays, and often people get caught behind one of the parked cars trying to merge.
Well said George – that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
The RTA must surely collect a huge amount of revenue across NSW, yet they seem incapable of managing our road system with the degree of efficiency demanded by us drivers.
I suspect much of Sydney’s traffic delays and congestion, is a result of poor traffic management, despite trips overseas by RTA folks to see how its done in parts of Europe and the United States which support enormous traffic loads more efficiently than we do.
And while I’m on this band wagon – put your hands up if you are sick and tired of moving 2km in one hour, due to an impossibly slow four-way intersection.
Why on earth doesn’t the Transport Minister call for designs of a simple four-lane overpass bridge type construction, which would allow a realtively smooth flow of traffic and thus require no expensive traffic light systems??
Oh that probably wouldn’t work, as then we would have a situation where that same state government, might loose a truck load of revenue from lost red light camera placements.
Anthony
I agree whole heartedly with the article, but you fail to give credit to the RTA where indeed there are many places that have clearway restrictions in place during peak hour. From a practical point of view, if every stretch of “major through road” were to be marked as clearway, there would be a huge associated cost, as well as outcries from local residents/shops who actually need parking to be available on those roads. And also, how would it be enforced? Should we have tow trucks on standby during peak hours ready to tow them away? Its not feasible and that is why the RTA wont do anything about it.
Also, these recent opinion pieces are beginning to sound more like mere whinges, adding nothing of substance on how the issue can really be tackled.
Baz, it’s like George said, it’s only ever a few cars that cause delays for hundreds, if not, thousands of drivers.
There are no shops on the street I refer to (Beacon Hill Road). Over the course of a year, we are talking about needless and significant delays for hundreds of thousands of drivers beacuse the RTA can’t find the time to errect a $400 clearway sign at the top of a street!
Does that seem hard to you ?
Anthony
How do we get those cars that are parked in the clearways towed? Do we contact the ploice, RTA or can we just call any towie to get them out of the way?
I live in Brisbane have have exactly the same problem, you think these drivers would have enough common sense to not park their cars in the flow of heavy traffic, even if there are signs saying they can park there. I suggest we each get a monster truck and fix the problem our selves.
brisbane has some of the worse traffic laws
specially on milton road were two cars block one of two lanes just to get some milk from a convenient store, seriously, who puts parking on one of brisbane’s busiest roads?
Look as long as you are not speeding whilst parking, double or triple parking, all is safe. Safety first.
I parked for three months three blocks from my apartment in Holland and (heaven forbid) walked to my residence – until my parking permit (which I paid for) arrived. Here in Brisbane Sandgate Road at Clayfield has plenty of off street parking, but because you CAN park outside of the peak periods, people do and cause incredible snarls in the traffic. Must we always be able to park immediately in front of where we need to go?
Brisbane’s system road sux! Alborz is right about Milton road, I use it almost every weekend. In heavy peak hour trafic, use the left lane see a car parked on the side and God help you!
How the hell can the left lane be a park at the same time?
i’ve just moved to adelaide since dec 08 from darwin and thing that gets me is the way cars park on the side of the road on most busy thoroughfares i think it just comes down to bad planning