On Friday, September 13th, the Dunedin City Council held a hearing to discuss the recently-revised proposal for parking on Harbour Terrace. While the situation remains unresolved, a new idea, pitched by Sport Otago, gained widespread support at the hearing. This new pitch reportedly involves keeping two parks as P5s, while another 18 will be restricted between the hours of 3 and 5pm as P60s.
The changing of parking restrictions on Harbour Terrace has been an ongoing discourse since July this year, coming as a result of requests from the public to increase the availability of parking for easier access to the sport grounds. Because of this, it has largely become a students versus sport groups dilemma. But according to hearing attendees, it seems like a mutual compromise has almost been reached.
The initial proposal from the City Council involved the restricting of 60 Harbour Terrace parking spaces, changing them from being unrestricted to P240s. Following an onslaught of 122 written submissions contesting the changes, however, the plan was revised, limiting the parking restrictions to only affect 20 parks, 18 as P240s and the remaining two as P5s.
Hanna, a student speaker at the hearing, concurred with Sport Otago’s proposal, stating, “I agree, that doesn’t sound too bad. [...] If you’ve parked in North Dunedin before, you’ll know that from about 2pm parks start loosening up anyway and it’s easier to find a park [...] You can park your car there all day and just move it from 3-5pm. You can still park there overnight and everything and commuters can still make use of it.”
OUSA President Keegan Wells and three other speakers also made submissions at the hearing, but did not get back to Critic with comment in time for print. The hearings committee will take into consideration these series of verbal submissions and come back to the public with a final proposal on changes set to be made. The date for the release of this information is unconfirmed.