26 October 2011

Gungahlin parking gets the Coe touch

| johnboy
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The Shadow Minister for Cars, Alistair Coe, is getting hot under the collar about the parking situation in the supposedly planned Gungahlin:

“There are inadequacies within the Town Centre in terms of parking, bus stops, pedestrian crossings and public transport, which ACT Labor has given little thought to.

“In Hibberson Street for example, there are serious congestion issues caused by car, pedestrians and bus traffic and the major bus stops obstruct traffic and visibility.

“That’s why today I will call ACT Labor to: investigate alternative arrangements for bus traffic; develop a plan to provide park and ride users with car parking from prime retail parking; consider additional on-street car parking on Gungahlin Place; and, provide additional car parking at Yerrabi.

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wildturkeycanoe said :

Special G – Around 4 months ago we went to the Woolies car park at lunch time [just after 12pm] a few times over a few days and spent up to 5 minutes of our time looking for a park. It was not the only time, I once tried to get a spot at 9am, to go to the bank, and went around and around. If you think this car park is usually empty..dream on.

Turkey by name, turkey by nature. If you couldn’t get a park next to Woolies, then you need glasses. That car park has never been full. Just because the first 2 rows had no spots doesn’t make it full.

Same with the Big W car park, never full. As for more than 2hrs parking, I used to park in the Big W carpark and take the bus to the city. Car was there all day from 7am to 7pm.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Special G – Around 4 months ago we went to the Woolies car park at lunch time [just after 12pm] a few times over a few days and spent up to 5 minutes of our time looking for a park. It was not the only time, I once tried to get a spot at 9am, to go to the bank, and went around and around. If you think this car park is usually empty..dream on.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Further – Special G – can you find any extended [more than 2 hour] parking anywhere within 100m of the town centre????? Duh!!

If you’re looking in the first two rows of the above ground woolies carpark then you will rarely find anything. If you go to the further parts of the carpark there is usuall plenty. You could even do something terrible and stop being lazy and park in the surface carpark across the road from there which is usually 99% empty or even go park in the carpark under the Big W which is normally no more than 40% full. But we wouldn’t want to do something involving walking 100m or crossing a road.

I have to say that Gungahlin is a great example of terrible planning. It’s like someone drew about 10 parallel lines and joined them every 100 metres or so and said “town centre done”. The flow of Flemington road right into the centre of the town centre like a funnel is stupid and there’s absolutely no logic to where anything has been placed or to the flow of traffic and pedestrians etc and there’s not much they can do about it because the main areas have been developed.

wildturkeycanoe10:41 pm 26 Oct 11

Further – Special G – can you find any extended [more than 2 hour] parking anywhere within 100m of the town centre????? Duh!!

wildturkeycanoe10:39 pm 26 Oct 11

Special G – Around 4 months ago we went to the Woolies car park at lunch time [just after 12pm] a few times over a few days and spent up to 5 minutes of our time looking for a park. It was not the only time, I once tried to get a spot at 9am, to go to the bank, and went around and around. If you think this car park is usually empty..dream on.

The underground parking for Coles is open very late. There is plenty of parking, just not plenty of people willing to walk more than 100m.

I like to read Coe’s press releases in Daffy Duck’s voice. It makes me laugh.

I have never seen the Woolies Gungahlin car park completely full. Anyone who says they can’t get a car park in Gungahlin is just lazy and doesn’t want to walk more than 100m to their destination.

Keijidosha said :

Whatever you call it, the concept of having open-air shopping plazas only really works in places far warmer than Canberra. It will not work here whilever there is an alternative – enclosed malls with enticing, climate-controlled environments.

It’s not just the cold and wind that are the problem — in the summer the baking heat and sun even more so. The lack of mature shade trees makes the problem worse.

So basically people will choose the mall in the summer for the aircon, and the mall in mid May through to mid October for the heating. So that leaves four months out of twelve where people might choose outside shops over the mall:)

As for light rail – somebody please tell Al he’s dreamin’

It ain’t gonna happen. I mean the govt can’t even put decent bus services together or get road projects right without various sort of debacles and cost over runs. Best to focus on battles we can actually win

There are great open air markets in both the hottest and coldest of climates.

But it could be they need to be great to hang on.

beejay76 said :

They designed Gungahlin to resemble an old-fashioned shopping strip, rather than an American-style ‘mall’. People hate those shopping centres, but it seems to me that people hate the old shopping strip style as well.

If we’re referring to American building conventions, then Gunghalin is more like a “strip mall”. 😉

Whatever you call it, the concept of having open-air shopping plazas only really works in places far warmer than Canberra. It will not work here whilever there is an alternative – enclosed malls with enticing, climate-controlled environments.

Of course with Gunghalin Town Centre it doesn’t help that they’re trying to squeeze a precinct the size of Belconnen Town Centre into an area the size of Kippax.

Gungahlin Al said :

The Gungahlin Town Centre Master Planning process earmarked the two major blocks between Valley Ave and Efkarpidis Street as sites for at-grade carparking for up to the medium-term timeframe.

Al, do you have a link to that report. There are a few Gungahlin planning reports around and I never know which one this is.

The other thing I’ve been meaning to ask is that I thought that the blocks either side of Flemington (nearer Wells Station Dr) were zoned as multi-use. Is this right, because I don’t see much multi use in the developments currently going up.

Gungahlin Al1:42 pm 26 Oct 11

The Gungahlin Town Centre Master Planning process earmarked the two major blocks between Valley Ave and Efkarpidis Street as sites for at-grade carparking for up to the medium-term timeframe. Great location, one block only from the bulk of the shopfronts, and putting the relative ugliness of parking opposite the definite ugliness of the Big W and Coles loading bays.

But they need to be built now – the influx of commuters parking in the existing shopping centre carparks is hurting their businesses and will lead to time limits and potentially pay parking, which we don’t want. Surface parking is dirt cheap (‘scuse pun) to build and solves the problem.

The related issue is the recent study on bus priorities on Hibberson and whether or not this might imperil our efforts to get that street (and preferrably Gungahlin Place for one block either side) turned into a shared zone. TAMS are apparently arguing that buses and shared zone will not work so are backing away from the shared zone. If this is correct then the bus route could easily be shifted to either Ernest Cavanagh or Efkarpidis Street (closer to the parking location).

The shared zone is more important to us.

I should add that these problems are easily resolved by light rail, which can co-exist with a shared zone very easily due to its smaller and clearly defined footprint.

They designed Gungahlin to resemble an old-fashioned shopping strip, rather than an American-style ‘mall’. People hate those shopping centres, but it seems to me that people hate the old shopping strip style as well.

If you centralise all the shops and whack in a gargantuan mass of parking, you get convenience but it’s ugly as sin. Spread the shops out over the streets and you get a better streetscape, but it’s very inconvenient. I don’t see a happy marriage in the future.

One big problem is that most of gungahlin’s parking is underground the supermarkets, and closes at 6 or something. This means if you go out to dinner in gunners there is nowhere to park.

Even in gungahlin they are building on top of the few open air car parks.

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