Parking and Trees
There has been plenty of discussion on social media around the newly formed spaces for trees in our main street this week. In the past few months I’ve made a point of counting available parking in our CBD – as I walked to lunch on Tuesday at 12:30pm I again observed similar numbers to those I’ve noticed in the past. In between the Civic Centre and Auburn Street, along Clifford Street, there were nine available spaces, and two disabled spaces. There were also three spaces available in the half block of Auburn Street between Clifford and Market Streets.
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On the way back to the office I counted 16 available spaces and three disabled spaces – all these during the busy lunch period. It is interesting to note that these numbers did not include the Workers Carpark, Ellesmere Street or McKell Place – I might continue to provide some random statistics over the coming months.
I also want to address a few re-occurring questions that are coming up in these discussions:
Paid parking: There are no plans to introduce paid parking into our CBD – a great benefit of living in Goulburn Mulwaree.
Trees in Auburn Street parking spaces: On average this project takes around 4 spaces per block. This is part of the continuing effort to make our CBD a modern, green, pedestrian friendly space. We believe the small loss of spaces is far outweighed by the benefits of additional trees.
Parking by the numbers: Goulburn has 106 car parks in the CBD per 1000 people – this compares favourably with other surveyed regional centres: Wagga Wagga 64 spaces per 1000 people, Port Macquarie 38 per 1000, Bundaberg 45 per 1000. Goulburn has 1825 off street spaces within 200m walking distance of the CBD – for the vast majority of our population a 200m walk is easily managed within two minutes. We will continue to provide high numbers of disabled parking for our community.
Will these trees cause damage?: The trees removed from Auburn Street a number of years ago were causing significant damage to our infrastructure and to heritage buildings. The trees we’ve planted have been chosen because they do not have invasive root structures that will cause damage – planting them metres away from the pedestrian walkways also means they won’t cause pavers to lift or be dislodged.
Future parking plans: The council is actively investigating and pursuing opportunities for parking development; this may include improved links with off-street parking, purchase of property and other options. This is a long term project but we will continue to move forward in not only improving the look and feel of our CBD, but also in improving connectivity and allowing for growth. Two current investigations are the Ellesmere Street and Cartwright Place carparks - both to be made one way and re-marked to increase parking spaces considerably.
Komungla Bridge
I had the pleasure last week of opening a brand new two-lane Komungla Bridge along with our local Federal MP Angus Taylor and a number of Currawang Road residents.
The vastly improved bridge was constructed for a total cost of $2.5 million. The project was joint funded by Goulburn Mulwaree Council and the Federal Government through their Bridge’s Renewal Program.
The flood immunity of the new bridge will be a 1 in 20 flood event, a vast improvement on the previous situation on Currawang Road. In 2017 we will be focusing on May Street Bridge and the Nadgigomar Bridge with both being replaced.
