Parking perk for people who punish commuting workers

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

You’d get over the price gouging. It’s the hypocrisy that’d annoy you most.

Officials at Galway City Council last November proposed increasing the cost of parking at local authority car parks by €3 per day to raise revenue.

Yes, the draft budget for 2022 produced by management recommended a 60% hike in parking costs at Dyke Road, College Road and Galway Cathedral. Under Chief Executive Brendan McGrath’s plan, parking rates would have risen from €5 to €8 per day.

But councillors exerted what little power they have and cut the proposed increase by half. So the daily rate in long-stay Council car parks in 2022 was increased to €6.50.

It mostly hits visitors, and people who live outside of the city, or places like Knocknacarra and commute to work in town. A tax on tourists; a tax on workers.

It didn’t get huge attention at the time; media and the public were too distracted by the budget’s sugar and spice and promises of tidal pools in Salthill. But it’s now beginning to sting workers already hit by the spiralling cost of living.

The Council argued that a daily rate of €8 would still mean public car parks were “significantly lagging behind” private car parks. Not true.

The Council €6.50 rate that now applies is far higher than City Park at the Fairgreen, which recently advertised €25 per week for seven-day access – that’s €5 per day for weekdays, with weekends free.

When the budget passed, the Council promised to introduce a monthly €100 ticket. This would mark a saving for commuting workers, with a rate of €3.33 per day.

But while the new daily rate of €6.50 came into effect on January 31, the €100 monthly ticket didn’t. They put up the daily charge without bringing in the saver ticket. Typical!

The budget talked about the “city’s obligations” to the “Climate Change Agenda”. It referenced a “modal shift” being a key element of the Galway Transport Strategy, and a need, “to set the cost of city centre parking at a level that does not undermine travel by public transport as a financially-realistic alternative to car travel”.

The fact is that for many commuters, car parking charges cannot undermine public transport as a financially-realistic alternative to car travel because there is no viable public transport alternative. Twenty years talking about Park and Ride for Connemara commuters – where is it? No trains from Tuam; and cycling from Headford isn’t an option either.

You wouldn’t mind so much if the extra €149,000 from higher parking charges was being spent on active travel. It’s not.

But what really irks people – and here’s where the hypocrisy comes in – is that the €8-a-day rate was proposed by management, many of whom travel to work by car and enjoy free parking in publicly-owned car parking spaces at City Hall. What’s the opportunity cost of that little perk?

This is a shortened preview version of Bradley Bytes. See this week’s Galway City Tribune to read  more bytes on Cycling cynics; RTÉ brewing up a storm; GMIT’s extensive property portfolio and Students’ scepticism over NUIG Traveller ally award. You can buy a digital edition HERE.