Actually night time parking shouldn’t be free

I don’t believe it is the job of Councils to provide free parking to car owners. They have a job in ensuring there is enough parking to meet demand, but not making it free.

From an economic point of view, one should pay to use a park at 2 am or 2 pm. The rates might be different, but the principle is the same.

Likewise even residential street parking should not be free.

Now this isn’t to say we should extend daytime parking rules and fees to all suburbs and overnight. It’s ridiculous to have a two hour time limit overnight for example. In suburbs there should arguably be no time limit.

And the fees for suburb parking should be way less than CBD parking and off-peak less than on-peak.

In an ideal world, we’ll have a parking app for all of NZ, and wherever we park, we just get charged automatically. It might be $2 while watching a movie from 6 pm to 9 pm, or $0.25c for parking in a suburb. There would also be maximum charges for parking near where you live.

That is some way off, but basically parking charges should follow the normal rules of supply and demand.

If some shops wish to have free parking outside their shops, then they should have the ability to lease the parks off the Council.