News & Discussion: Adelaide City Council

[Nathan]

I think it was a case of sit back during the mayoral race and take a more moderate stance so that Yarwood would take all the heat from the media and anti-brigade.

[Vee]

Didn't Haese ride into the Lord Mayor's office on a platform that was pretty much "cars, parking, cars, cars, no bike lanes and cars"?

I think that's just the route that everyone (myself included) presumed he would take being a self-confessed motoring enthusiast.

I guess at the end of the day Haese's a businessman and it seems he's got the commonsense to realise that, as far as 21st century cities are concerned, the car has had its day. Make cities pedestrian, bike and public transport friendly, boost their populations and business will flourish.

I would like to think that Haese (post gaining the mayoralty) has also been influenced by attending and learning from various urban design conferences and the interactions, research and evidence of progressive policies from other cities (including attendance at the recent Paris Climate Change Conference).

[Llessur2002]

Hopefully so. I wonder if Yarwood was speaking at any of them...

Either way, I must admit I haven't disliked Haese half as much as I thought I would when he took office - in fact so far I'm sitting cautiously on the fence. It is still relatively early days and there's not been enough time for implementing some of the things he's spoken about so it still has the potential to be all talk but no action. The next couple of years will determine his true colours I guess. I certainly never thought I'd (potentially) see him as one of the more progressive members of the Council - but then that's not really difficult given the makeup of much of the ACC...

[mshagg]

Hola amigos

ACC today released some consultation on the 2016-2020 strategic plan via the 'yoursay' portal.

http://yoursay.adelaidecitycouncil.com/strategic-plan

Roughly a month to provide submissions. I've not yet had a look myself but will share some thoughts having done so.

[Wayno]

Thanks for sharing. I'll go through the ACC plan and submit a response.

[mshagg]

A few thoughts (on an exceptions basis):

The vision statement is just awful:

"Adelaide is a smart, green, liveable, boutique city full of rich experiences"

It's completely lacking in anything aspirational and gives the reader no idea what council actually wants the place to look/feel/be like. You could actually use it to describe Adelaide as it is today.

The one and only reference to cycling is "we'll work with state/fed governments to promote it as an option". Pathetic, given two key principles of the plan are GREEN and LIVEABLE.

Good focus on population growth, remaining committed to State Govt targets. 22k to 28k CBD population in the 4 years covered by the plan.

Some concern about the caveats to growth, given it's bundled up in a very wish-washy statement about "distinctive heritage and cultural values". They need to flesh this out more - and hold themselves to account. Speaking of which - no mention of accountability. Too many times we see the clear, public desire thrown under a bus because of a self interested councilor or business lobby.

Also, bit of a chuckle when they mention diversity... get a look at the group photo in the strategic plan. Such a diverse group of people lol.

[jk1237]

not sure where to post this, but its an interesting article from America that rings a bell with us here in Adelaide:

from http://cityobservatory.org/its-time-for ... n-parking/

It’s time for a “big short” in parking

By Joe Cortright |

22.3.2016

Last year’s hit film The Big Short depicted various investors who, realizing that there was a housing bubble in the years before the 2000s crash, found ways to “short” housing, betting against the market and ultimately making a killing when the crisis hit. Looking forward, there’s a plausible case to be made that this might be the time for a “Big Short” in parking, as a confluence of the growing popularity of walkable neighborhoods and the arrival of self-driving cars may make our current levels of parking way over-supplied compared to demand in the near future.

There’s a lot of speculation that the advent of self-driving vehicles could create a huge surplus of parking. A recent paper by University of Texas Professor Kara Kockelman and her colleagues estimates that in urban environments, self-driving cars could eliminate the need for about 90 percent of parking. The theory is that fleets of on-demand autonomous vehicles would substitute for most private car ownership, that cars would nearly always be in use—and when not in use could be stored in peripheral low value locations—with the result that the demand for parking, especially in urban centers would collapse. If that’s the case, a whole lot of private parking structures may suddenly find themselves with fewer customers, less revenue, and a badly broken business model: exactly the conditions for “shorting” this industry.


So who, exactly is “long” in the parking market? Well, there are some private firms who build and operate parking lots. But in many places around the country, the entities that have made substantial future bets on parking are local governments. Since the 1930s, city governments have been borrowing money to build and operate municipal parking lots for public use. Most big cities operate a substantial parking enterprise. Not only to most communities provide copious amounts of under-priced parking in the public right of way—with devastating impacts on travel behaviour and urban form—but many cities build off-street parking lots and structures, often in central commercial districts. For example, The city of Los Angeles owns 118 parking facilities with more than 11,500 parking spaces. And cities have been regularly expanding the supply of parking, often relying on debt financing, on the expectation that parking revenues will be sufficient to cover the costs of bond interest and principal. For example, the City of Miami Beach is issuing $67 million in in revenue bonds to expand its convention center parking garage. Like home mortgages, circa 1999, this mostly seems like a boring, low risk business. Cities borrow money on the bond market and then pay it back out of parking revenues. And so far, at least, municipalities have had little trouble making payments.

Given that the expected lifetime of parking structures—and perhaps even more critically, the repayment period for the bonds used to finance them—is measured in decades, the potential advent of autonomous vehicles is a live issue. So what happens if there’s a sea change in the market for parking, and if parking revenues fall—or perhaps fail to live up to municipal expectations? A couple of recent case studies show that shortfalls in parking demand are not purely an academic concern.

In New York, the $238 million parking garages built next to Yankee Stadium has gone bankrupt—it failed to meet its expected occupancy levels—and the local government is out more than $25 million so far in expected revenue from the garage—in addition to more than $100 million in public subsidies that supported its construction.

In Scranton Pennsylvania, a local parking authority issued millions of dollars in bonds backed up by the city’s guarantee of its full faith and credit. When demand for parking slumped, the parking authority could no longer pay debt service, and in 2012 came to the city to make up the shortfall. Initially, the city balked at making the payments, but found its credit rating jeopardized, and ultimately relented, using other city funds to make the bond payments. Even so, the crisis hasn’t abated: demand is still depressed, the garages are deteriorating, and the city is now looking at demolishing the top levels of two of the older garages rather than repairing them.

The financial viability and implied risk of borrowing millions to build parking garages hinges directly on the accuracy of forecasts of the demand for parking. That issue is a live one in Portland, where the city’s urban renewal authority is issuing $26 million in bonds to finance an 425-space parking structure adjacent to the city’s convention center and a proposed headquarters hotel. The site is also adjacent to the city’s most traveled light rail lines and is served by the newly built streetcar. It is just a few blocks from an apartment building with the nation’s largest off-street bike parking facility.

But the big question, raised by the Portland Shoupistas, is whether, ten or 20 years from now, there will be any market for hundreds of additional off-street parking spaces in a neighborhood that already has 3,300 on-street and structured spaces.

Already, according to Bike Portland, car rental demand is lagging far behind growth in hotel occupancy. Visitors to Portland—and especially attendees at convention events—choose not to drive, and instead take advantage of the city’s diverse transit system. In a brilliant bit of statistical journalism, Bike Portland’s Michael Anderson pulled together data showing how even as the city has recorded increasing numbers of tourists and convention attendees, visitor car rentals have been in steady decline.

In addition to growing uncertainty about the demand for parking in the future, the other factor which makes it hard to answer our question about whether now is the time for a “Big Short” in parking is the paucity of data about our public sector parking infrastructure. In a growing world of big data and smart cities, one thing that is surprisingly difficult to find is the total number of municipally owned and operating parking lots and structures. While some data sources show the location of publicly accessible parking—like Parkme.com—they don’t provide data in a way that allows one to easily discern the total number of spaces in a city or their ownership.

One hint as to the scale of the municipal parking enterprise comes from the Census, which tabulates data on city budgets. It reports (2013 State and Local Government Finances) that in 2013, the total parking revenues of municipal governments nationally totaled $2.7 billion.

There’s a good chance that many of these parking lots will become stranded assets: expensive, debt-financed projects that no longer generate enough revenue to cover their costs of construction and operation. When we add in the considerable social costs of subsidized parking and driving, newly constructed parking structures in cities may be the urban equivalent of new coal-fired power plants: obsolete, value-destroying activities. There’s not a lot cities can do about previous decisions to take on debt to build parking garages, but going forward, it seems like they ought to take a very careful look at whether it’s a sound investment, or whether they’re setting themselves up to be on the wrong side of tomorrow’s “Big Short.”

[Wayno]

From AdelaideNow

Meet Daniel Bennett, the architect who is bringing good design to Adelaide’s streets

SYDNEY-born Daniel Bennett never expected to fall in love with Adelaide – let alone have a chance to make his adopted city even better by creating the Adelaide Design Manual, a website that gives city workers and residents the chance to study and shape the CBD.

Bennett’s love of landscapes started early.

“I grew up around Balmain and Five Dock. The industrial sites that littered Balmain’s waterfronts then were epic. My father was a draftsman and engineer with well-known construction firms and he kept an eye on waterfront sites.”

At one industrial site, now-famous landscape architect Bruce MacKenzie started making his mark on Sydney by creating the stunning Yurulbin Park.

“I watched this happen – weekly visits as a seven-year-old, peering through construction fencing, watching a landscape being revealed.”

Fast-forward a decade, and Bennett, his UNSW landscape architecture degree in hand, “escaped” the Sydney Olympics with now-wife Jacquie for a stint in Edinburgh, in his mother’s homeland, where he worked for the world-renowned Turnbull Jeffrey Partnership and saw just how great a small, festival-oriented city can be.

The couple returned to Australia in 2001 and both agreed: “I hate Sydney!” In 2004, a job came up at design firm Hassell in Adelaide. “We came over and thought ‘We’ve got to move here’.”

On arrival, he made an immediate impact, creating the impressive Gallipoli Underpass on South Rd, scooping a national award for his plan for Salisbury’s open spaces and, in the process, educating key players on applying design to landscapes.

Now the 43-year-old heads City Design and Transport at Adelaide City Council and is president of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects – roles that let him focus of making Adelaide a happier and better place to live. “Happiness can come from all sorts of things – a beautiful old building, a tree-lined square, somewhere where kids are safe,” he says.

Bennett will play a key role in the Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan. Expect some very smart solutions to Adelaide’s traffic conundrums.

adelaidedesignmanual.com.au

[jk1237]

ha, the usual quarterly pro car nonsense from the Sunday Mal/News Ltd in co-operation with another hideous conservative councilor - Alex Antic (whoever he is) telling us we need more cars in the city not less, otherwise the CBD will die.

He must be onto something, because Adelaide CBD, the city with the most carparks, and wide roads full of cars, is the economic powerhouse of Australia, while Syd, Melb, Bris, Perth, who have discouraged car entry as much as possible, have turned into declining, abandoned cities, with no construction, and stagnating skylines. oh wait

[rev]

ha, the usual quarterly pro car nonsense from the Sunday Mal/News Ltd in co-operation with another hideous conservative councilor - Alex Antic (whoever he is) telling us we need more cars in the city not less, otherwise the CBD will die.

He must be onto something, because Adelaide CBD, the city with the most carparks, and wide roads full of cars, is the economic powerhouse of Australia, while Syd, Melb, Bris, Perth, who have discouraged car entry as much as possible, have turned into declining, abandoned cities, with no construction, and stagnating skylines. oh wait

Less cars is a good thing. But the way the incompetent "leaders" in this state will go about it, at all levels of government, will turn it into a disaster.
Slowly limiting or reducing the amount of cars in the CBD should only be done simultaneously with public transport infrastructure coming online. For example expanding the tram network to actually be a network of tram lines into the suburbs, all coming into the CBD. Then people will have a viable alternative to bringing their car in.
It needs to be a well thought out and executed plan/project.
Who here thinks the ACC will be capable of working with the government to deliver something like that, that actually works?
How many months, or weeks, do you think it'll be before someone in the ACC starts complaining about how much control they don't have and how much control they think they should have?
This is the problem. There is no central planning authority that has the first and final say.
That's why Adelaide's streets and landscape looks like a dogs breakfast on a bad day. Hell there isn't any uniformity within the Adelaide CBD it self.

What's needed is the creation of an Adelaide Planning Authority, that oversees everything from building planning approvals to streetscape and parkland development.
For the whole of the Adelaide metropolitan area, with the metro area split up into logical zones that have a sub-division of the central authority to oversee those areas, based on the same set of regulations/guidelines for streetscapes, and zone specific building regulations(hilly areas etc).

Any attempt to limit cars into the CBD will be a disaster until there is a central planning authority for the city and metro areas.

[Norman]

Regarding the design of our city streets, have you seen and read the Adelaide Design Manual? That's a good first step ahead.

[mshagg]

ACC unashamedly put peds at the top of their road-user pyramid. It's not about discouraging or encouraging cars, it's about getting a better balance between road uses. With that usually coming at the cost of space currently used by cars, there is an impact on their use in the city (although the humble single occupant vehicle still does pretty well for itself).

Example - you must be crazy to choose to drive down Pirie st at 5pm since they put the zebra crossing in (now sapol just need to do something about impatient drivers blocking KWS). Similar to bus lanes on grenfell/currie - flinders/franklin or grote/wakefield become more attractive choices and are better suited to the heavy traffic. The numbers suggested people previously using frome st looked elsewhere after losing a lane to cyclists and car parking.

[Nathan]

Oh for fucks sake...

Adelaide set for renewed battle over city transport
http://indaily.com.au/arts-and-culture/ ... transport/

The Adelaide City Council has voted for a complete review of its transport policies over concerns they are too "anti-car", reviving ideological battles from the days of former lord mayor Stephen Yarwood.

The council voted unanimously, though with absentees, last night to request a full review of its transport strategy ‘Smart Move’ and design strategy ‘the Adelaide Design Manual’.

The review would ensure the policies “do not unnecessarily impede, reduce or bottleneck motor vehicle traffic or reduce the number of traffic lanes and/or parking spaces available for motor vehicles”.

Ironically, just this morning Lord Mayor Martin Haese joined Transport Minister Stephen Mullighan as he praised an announcement by the federal Labor Party that it would co-fund multibillion dollar AdeLINK tram upgrades for Adelaide if elected.


More city trams would necessarily reduce lanes for vehicular traffic.

Mullighan told reporters: “I think all South Australians were very pleased to see the commitment from the federal Labor Party that they would be investing in public transport here in South Australia … (including) to expand the tram network across the city”.

“It’ll be particularly important for the CBD of Adelaide.

“That’s why I’m so pleased to have such a forward-thinking and progressive Lord Mayor in Martin Haese, who understands the benefit of improved public transport infrastructure for the CBD.”

Haese said the council’s goal was to make it easier for people to come into the city, irrespective of their choice of transport.

He said the council would need to “look at each of our roads on a case-by-case basis”.

Addressing last night’s vote, Haese said it was good governance to review Smart Move, because it was four years old.

“The key thing here is that plan was adopted in 2012,” Haese said.

“We’re now talking about automated vehicles, we’re talking about a whole range of new smart city technologies, which are quite game-changing.

“So it’s good governance to have a good re-look at any strategic plan – transport plans included.”

We can’t sit around while there are tumbleweeds rolling down the street.

South Ward councillor Alex Antic told last night’s council meeting that the council’s transport and design strategies were “fundamentally flawed” because they discouraged people from driving cars into the city.

Antic said the council’s policies were “deliberately designed to stop traffic”, adding that “the trigger for my running for council was the somewhat-catastrophe of Frome Street”.

As InDaily revealed in February, the Adelaide Design Manual prioritises pedestrians and cyclists in street upgrades and favours narrower driving lanes and reduced traffic speeds in the CBD.


Antic described cars as “the lifeblood” of the city, where roads are “the veins” and businesses are “the heart”.

He said businesses were being harmed by street redevelopments such as Frome Street because “a city without cars is a bankrupt city”.

“We can’t sit around … while there are tumbleweeds rolling down the street.”

He cited comments left on AdelaideNow news articles criticising the council’s direction on transport as evidence of “what we’re up against”.

A city council report revealed by InDaily last year revealed that traffic numbers had, indeed, reduced between 2010 and 2015, but that there had been no directly correlating slowdown in economic activity, and traffic flow around the ring route had increased.

Central Ward councillor Megan Hender voted to support the review, but disputed Antic’s assessment of the impact of car drivers on city businesses.

“Cars don’t buy things, people do,” she said, urging her colleagues to consider the positive impact of upgrades to Rundle Street and Prospect Road on nearby businesses and house prices.

She argued that the narrowing of driving lanes and the reduction car parking spaces in those streets had been a boon business.

“The shops down there are flourishing,” she said.

“The consequences of that has been … significantly higher property prices and an increases sense of community.”

Hender agreed the policies should be reviewed to take into account developments such as the extended O-Bahn, but warned against going backwards on transport policy.

“I want to make sure that when we review these documents … it’s based on really solid, world-class research.”

Hender also argued against the idea that the council was “anti-car”, suggesting the claim was doing damage to city businesses.

“I want to stop this narrative that this council is anti-car,” Hender said.

She told the meeting that, since the council owned thousands of city car parks and helped to keep parking prices to a minimum, it was actually welcoming drivers into the city.

[crawf]

Antic described cars as “the lifeblood” of the city, where roads are “the veins” and businesses are “the heart”.

What is this the 1960s?. Cars are not the 'lifeblood' of the city, people are. Who is this individual?

There needs to be a better transport balance in the city - better trains, frequent buses and less carparks.

[realstretts]

Meanwhile in Melbourne, plans were recently released to increase cycle commuting to 25% of modal share.

I wonder why young, intelligent people are making a mass exodus to Melbourne from Adelaide? Might not only be because there are no jobs.