Newcastle City Council will end discounted morning and afternoon weekday parking on January 1, introducing a flat hourly rate of $4, but give a 25 per cent discount to drivers who use its parking app.
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A trial of $2.50 hourly parking fees in one- and two-hour zones from 9 to 11am and 2 to 5pm will end on December 31.
“The move follows feedback that variable pricing was confusing for drivers and led to unnecessary parking fines,” the council said on Wednesday.
The hourly rate for the first six months of 2019 will be $3 for those using the EasyPark pay-by-phone app as the council prepares to roll out new technology which it says will guide drivers to vacant spaces.
The council also will suspend the 10 per cent surcharge it has been applying to app users.
The Saturday hourly rate will increase from $2.50 to $3 if using a meter, or $2.75 on the app.
Council chief executive officer Jeremy Bath said the hourly $3 rate for app users was a “significant reduction in the price of parking in the city during the peak time of the day from 11am to 2pm”.
"By offering such a significant discount on the hourly parking rate, there is, of course, a risk to parking revenue,” he said.
“To manage this risk we will review the discount in time for the 2019-20 budget."
The price of all-day 8P parking will fall by $1 on EasyPark, reducing the daily cost of the car park at No.2 Sportsground to $5 for app users.
Mr Bath said drivers would have to use the app to access 15-minute free parking as the paper ticket-based system had been “increasingly abused” by drivers since it was introduced in 2015.
The EasyPark app allows drivers to pay only for the time they use and remotely top up payments after receiving SMS notifications 15 minutes before their meter expires.
The council says it is working with the app’s developers on a “Find and Park” bolt-on to help motorists find vacant parks.
“With light rail construction behind us and the city set for an exciting 2019, we know that parking ease is important to many people who shop in the CBD,” Mr Bath said.
“That’s why we're incentivising use of the app to make parking cheaper and easier.”
He said the Find and Park part of the app had been planned for almost a year, but the council had waited to learn from the roll-out of the scheme in Sweden this year.
"By July next year, the app will have the ability to point out to drivers the most likely place to find a park, based on sophisticated parking algorithms,” he said.
The council voted last week to delegate authority to Mr Bath to establish or remove paid parking “schemes” in the city.
A report to councillors linked the decision with the council’s 2018 parking management plan, which suggests introducing paid parking into parts of Cooks Hill, The Junction and Hamilton to increase parking turnover and encourage public transport use.
But the council said in response to questions from the Newcastle Herald that it had “no current plan to amend the locations where paid parking exists”.