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Last week the City announced that it will be charging tariffs for on-street parking bays in De Waterkant, Kloof Street in Gardens and Main Road in Kenilworth.
Tariffs will be charged to certain streets in De Waterkant; along Kloof Street in Gardens and some of the busy side streets intersecting with Kloof and Main Road in Kenilworth to ensure a turnover of parking bays for visitors to these areas.
On-street parking will be managed between 08:00 and 17:00 on weekdays, between 08:00 and 13:00 on Saturdays and no parking management will be in effect on Sundays or public holidays.
A Kloof Street resident, who does not want to be named, says residents were not informed.
“I am 100% against it. It won’t even benefit the City, but it will benefit a corporate institution,” explains the resident.
Motorists who need longer-stay parking in these areas are advised to park along the following streets:
- Jan Smuts Street
- Sir Lowry Road between Tennant and Darling Streets
- Buitengracht
The applicable tariffs along these long-stay streets are:
- For less than 4,5 hours: R30
- Between 4,5 and nine hours: R50
The City says managed parking will provide relief to customers who need parking close to shops, restaurants, service centres and other destinations.
It says businesses that depend on walk-in trade will also benefit as customers will find it easier to find on-street parking seeing that parking management is a deterrent for the illegal occupation of on-street parking bays for hours at end.
But some businesses in Kloof Street do not agree.
Desiree Tsuma, Floor Manager at Eatstanbul Restaurant, says: “We already have limited parking. If our customers have to pay for the on-street parking this will affect us, because now they will rather go to another place. It would help if they provided us with designated parking.”
Logan Coutts-Rogers, part-time Manager at another restaurant, says “I don’t think it will affect us that much. At the moment our regular customers already know that parking here is limited, so some of them walk instead. It will, however, affect us as staff. That means we will have to pay for parking.”
Alex Kays, Junior Manager at Shift Expresso Bar, says clients use their establishment to work remotely, sometimes for several hours.
“People sometimes spend hours here. Implementing a parking tariff would mean that they wouldn’t be able to do this. Because they know they would have to pay for food and parking. We were not informed about this either.”
The City says it intends to introduce a pilot resident permit system for De Waterkant within the next two weeks as a mechanism to reserve parking on the periphery of managed areas for residents only.
Rob Quintas, the Mayco member for urban mobility, says this is to prevent visitors to businesses and restaurants from parking in on-street parking bays in residential streets near areas where the City charges a tariff for the use of an on-street parking bay.
Quintas says: “More information will be made available soon. The lessons learned from this pilot will assist the City in fine-tuning the system for possible roll-out to other areas where parking management has been implemented.”
He adds: “Parking tariffs are not intended to be punitive but are implemented to ensure there is a high turnover of parking bays in popular recreational and business areas. This is to the benefit of visitors, and businesses as parking bays will not be occupied for hours on end by the same person.”
The applicable parking tariffs are R3,40 per 15 minutes.
Cash payments can be made via SnapScan, debit card or credit card.
Motorists need to pay for parking upfront. This is to prevent a situation where motorists return to their vehicles and drive off before paying the marshal.
Quintas says the purpose of managing parking is to stimulate economic activity and to provide access to businesses that need to create jobs.
“We have to make sure that motorists pay for using parking bays and comply with the time restrictions. It often happens that motorists refuse to pay marshals, or they simply ignore the time limits imposed. This is extremely important, in particular as the City and businesses are in a phase of economic recovery.”
Quintas says a clamping protocol is being introduced where repeat offenders who attempt to avoid paying or who refuse to pay, will have the wheels of their vehicles clamped.
He says repeat offenders will be fined and adds that fines for parking violations range between R300 and R1 000, depending on the violation.
