Grattan Institute Parking Report says 86,000 spaces could cost $5.2bn
The grattan institute parking report says Australia could waste $5.2bn building 86,000 unwanted car parking spaces over the next five years unless parking minimums are scrapped. Dominic Behrens, one of the report’s authors, said the rules already leave too much off-street parking sitting empty under apartment buildings.
Dominic Behrens report
Behrens said about 40% of the parking spaces under apartment buildings in Australia sit empty every night. He also said 40% of Australian households in a studio or one-bedroom apartment do not have a car, while Sydney still requires a new one-bedroom apartment to come with an average of 0.6 car spaces.
Grattan recommends removing the minimum number of car parking spaces per bedroom for new builds. The report also says better on-street parking management through permit schemes, time limits, and user charges would help in high-demand areas.
Apartment costs in Sydney
The report estimates the rules add $70,000 to the cost of building a typical two-bedroom apartment in Sydney, $62,000 in Melbourne, $113,000 in Brisbane, $137,000 in Perth and $95,000 in Adelaide. Grattan says removing the rules would cut thousands of dollars from new-home costs and reduce construction time.
Behrens said the burden falls most heavily on lower-income renters. “If we got rid of these rules and built more housing, it’s rents at the lower end of the spectrum that would go down the most, and so really the biggest burden of these rules falls on the people who have the least capacity to pay,” he said.
Parking minimums since 1950s
Parking minimums were originally imposed in the 1950s and remain common nationwide, despite decades of criticism from academics. David Mepham, author of Rethinking Parking, said councils often hesitate because parking carries a strong emotional charge. “Emotionally we’ve got this very deep connection to driving and what we can see as being a right to park,” he said.
That political pressure shows up locally, Mepham said. “[Residents will] get on the phone to the councillor, and traders will give their councillor a rev. Everyone wants more parking, but no one wants to pay for it,” he said.
