Car Parking in Hastings

The long term car parks in Hastings will revert to paid parking at 50 cents an hour from March 14, while parking in the city streets will remain free while council consults with residents on whether to continue it or not.

Hastings District Council decided in February to tweak the parking arrangements to give people wanting to park for longer than allowed in the main streets an option. Having paid all-day parking in the Eastern and Southern car parks is expected to be popular with inner city workers who have asked council to re-visit the issue.

The Northern, Lyndon Rd, King St, and Queen St West parks will have three hour limits.

In one other change, the four hour free parks on Karamu Rd, Queen St East, Warren St North and Russell St South will be reduced to two hours. That will address concerns from business owners in those areas that the four hour parks are being used as long term parks by city workers, locking their customers out of parks.

Outside of those two changes, the city’s on-street parks will remain free with the current time limits of between one and two hours.

Consultation on whether to continue with the free parking in the main streets will be undertaken between April 2 and May 8, as part of the annual plan consultation.

The consultation will give the public choices on how the free parking should be paid for if people decide they wish to continue it.

It cost about $1.2 million a year to run restricted parking across the Hastings district, with about $700,000 of income coming from things like ticketing for expired vehicle warrants and registrations and car park leases. That left about $500,000 to be found. The parking costs remain fairly fixed, with staff still required to ensure parking time limits are adhered to, and to police warrants and registrations.

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