WITH the revitalisation of the Nicholas Street Precinct and hopes of drawing more businesses to the Ipswich CBD, Ipswich City Council is set to implement a new parking plan for replacing the 13-year-old parking strategy currently in place.
The whole-of-city approach to parking is being sold as delivering better outcomes for all residents and businesses.
The Ipswich CBD currently offers more than 3500 parking spots, both on and off the street, so the new iGO Parking Action Plan will manage parking demand city-wide for the next 10 years.
Infrastructure, Planning and Assets Committee chairperson Councillor Andrew Antoniolli said council began updating the plan two years ago.
This included extensive community consultation to better understand what residents needed from council-managed parking.
“A key foundation of the new plan is to take a ‘demand management approach’ to parking, Cr Antoniolli said. “This is the acknowledgement that existing car parking supply should be optimised before new car parking supply is created.
“The plan also attempts to balance the increasingly diverse needs of both businesses and residents who may need short or long- stay parking, access to more loading zones, disability spaces, or even more electric vehicle charging stations and bicycle parking.
“Parking in Ipswich is always in high demand, and the new Parking Action Plan adopted by council on Thursday will allow us to better balance the needs of all residents and businesses.
“This new Parking Action Plan establishes parking precincts across busy city hubs within Ipswich Central and the Springfield Town Centre.”
Cr Antoniolli said some of the other key updates included updating the 2011 Ipswich Central parking management framework and precincts, a new parking management framework and precincts for Springfield Central along with school parking updates.
He said that making better use of existing kerbside parking was critical to avoid the escalating cost of constructing new off-street car parking facilities, which can cost upwards of $71,000 per car parking space.
