City of Sydney recently released its Draft Neighbourhood Parking Policy. The policy outlines the City’s approach to managing parking demands throughout all its precincts, including Glebe and Forest Lodge. The City is seeking to bring about consistency across all the areas it administers.

Key principles adopted by the City are to prioritise parking for residents, businesses and their visitors and customers, and to actively discourage commuter parking in residential and commercial areas, through parking controls and parking permits. the Glebe Society supports this approach.

The City sought answers from the community on a series of questions about parking time limits, parking for the disabled and for care workers and about resident, visitor and business parking permits.

The Glebe Society has lodged a submission with the City, focusing on parking in Glebe and Forest Lodge. The main points we made in the submission were as follows.

  • Commuter parking and parking pressures in general are likely to increase in parts of Glebe and Forest Lodge and the City will need to monitor the situation. The housing development at Harold Park, the proposed housing development in Bay and Cowper Sts, the possible ferry services from Glebe Point and from Johnston St and the increasing use of the foreshore parks at weekends will all have an impact.
  • Nevertheless, the City needs to respond in a measured way; and parking controls, or tighter parking controls, should only be imposed where the City in consultation with local residents clearly establishes their need, based on actual and proven parking pressures.
  •  Not all the streets in Glebe and Forest Lodge are subject to parking time limits. We think this situation is desirable and should remain, unless the City establishes the need for change in consultation with local residents. (We haven’t had any indication from the City that it intends to impose further parking restrictions at this stage.)
  • We support the City’s proposal to trial free 15 minute parking on Glebe Point Rd, and think this should be extended to parts of St Johns Rd and Ross St adjacent to retail areas.
  • Where parking time limits are necessary, the time limit should normally be two hours on residential streets and should generally apply from 8am to 6pm, extending to 10pm on streets adjacent to retail areas, restaurants and hotels. Except for these areas, there should be no time limits in the weekends. Four hour time limits should apply outside restaurants and cafés in Glebe and Forest Lodge to cater for patrons.
  • We support the present system of up to two resident parking permits per household depending on the number of on-site parking spaces available, with no resident or visitor permits available for multi-unit developments. Visitor parking permits should continue to be available in Glebe and Forest Lodge, subject to the City’s proposal to issue day visitor permits in place of yearly permits that have been the source of abuse and theft. Visitor permits should apply to borrowed vehicles and to car pool arrangements. Permits for business vehicles should continue to be available in Glebe and Forest Lodge.

The full text of our submission and the City’s Policy are available by clicking here.