Next month, parking in the three City Council car parks – Downtown, the Civic and Victoria St – will cost $24 a day and $12 for the evening. At the moment, parking in these three buildings is $17 a day and $8 for the evening. One reason for the increase is to allow more spaces for short-term parking for shoppers or people who have appointments in the city.
There will also be parking restrictions on some inner city streets where people now park and walk to work. Local residents will have parking permits but other people will be restricted to two hour parking. It is possible that people will have to pay for city street parking in the evening also.
Another change will be for park and ride customers. At the moment it is free to park your car and catch a train. However, there will soon be a cost to leave your car in most park and ride areas.
Parking fines will also increase. There has been no increase in fines for 15 years and some people do not pay for parking. They gamble that they won’t be caught but if they are caught, the fine is not very high.
Auckland Transport is trying to encourage more people to use public transport. Commuter traffic on Auckland motorways during peak periods is very frustrating.
Listen to October 30th 2014 and July 17th 2014 to hear more about Auckland traffic problems.
Vocabulary
• parking permits – piece of paper on their windscreen to show they are residents
• restrictions (n), restrict (v) – set limits
• commuter – going to work and returning from work
• peak periods – when the highest number of cars are on the road
• frustrating – annoying, make people feel stressed
Note: it is frustrating, people feel frustrated
Many adjectives are like this: e.g. exciting/ed, interesting/ed; tiring/ed, annoying/ed, worrying/ed, encouraging/ed