New draft Moreland Integrated Transport Strategy seeks to reduce growth in cars
The City of Moreland has released a draft update of its Moreland Integrated Transport Strategy and Car Parking Strategy. The update was not scheduled to occur for another two years, however given the rate of change, particularly in the south of the municipality, the review was accelerated.
In the draft Car Parking Strategy, changes are proposed that will enable development to occur with zero parking as of right and a proposed strategy to complement the parking changes would force behavioural change and stop on-street car parks filling up with residents cars.
After a community consultation round that commenced in December 2017, residents responded by telling council they dislike issues associated with increasing traffic - such as congestion, rat-running through minor residential streets - and that many would use active and public transport more to get around but can't owing to infrastructure and service deficits.
Many people would support measures to improve walking, cycling and public transport options, even if this might make driving through the area a bit slower – this was the case in both the north and south of Moreland, and across users of all transport modes, including car drivers.
Parking has been identified as an important area over which Council has significant control. The Draft Parking Strategy shows how we would implement the parking actions in the Draft Moreland Integrated Transport Strategy.
It aims to reduce the growth of cars in Moreland as our population increases, while protecting the ability of existing residents to park on-street by introducing more parking restrictions.
City of Moreland
Some of the biggest changes relate to the Parking Strategy.
Parking minimums are proposed to be removed from the three main activity centres in Moreland - Brunswick, Coburg and Glenroy - and in their place, parking maximums would be implemented.
In Moreland, residents are able to apply for a permit that exempts them from any parking restrictions on the street - this, however, does not apply to people who live in dwellings that were subdivided after 2011.
In conjunction with post 2011 permit exemptions, the switch from minimums to maximums, this would clear the decks for developments that seek to have zero or minimal car parking and in order to stop residents of dwellings in the new development from parking cars on the street, it is proposed that restrictions based on time be added to streets in activity centres that do not currently have them.
Likewise, each of the three major activity centres would have buffer zones surrounding them that too would introduce timed parking restrictions if they don't already exist.
In twelve neighbourhood centres, it is proposed there will be no switch to parking maximums however minimum parking requirements would be reduced by 20% and these areas would also have time restrictions added to streets which don't have them.
Elsewhere in the Car Parking Strategy, there is a section which deals with the reallocation of road space.
"Support net reduction in car parking where this facilitates sustainable movement corridors or creates places for people, consistent with the road user hierarchy", "Continuously and proactively review whether car parking is needed and take steps to repurpose the space for movement or place for people" and "Seek opportunities to re-use Council off-street car parking areas as green community spaces" are but a few of the proposed actions.
the Moreland Integrated Transport Strategy and Car Parking Strategy can be viewed and submissions can be lodged on moreland.vic.gov.au. Feedback closes at 5pm until August 17th.
Lead image credit: Draft MITS.
