Lack of parking near construction sites congesting suburban streets in ACT
Canberra tradies say they're being forced to park well away from their construction sites, while residents complain of construction vehicles blocking streets. Both groups say something needs to be done to stop the problem growing.
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00:00 Parking in Canberra can be challenging at the best of times and tradies need a good park more than most.
00:07 We need to have access to our office so to speak, our trucks and trailers and we can't walk a kilometre to go and pick up a bag of screws every time.
00:16 Parry Pickleman tried to get a permit to park near his work site for more than a month.
00:20 We just need a permit so that we don't get fined because by the time we finish this job we'll have racked up probably five to ten thousand dollars in fines.
00:28 But was told he and his workers were ineligible.
00:31 Access Canberra website has got parking permits but only for residents as a contractor, there's nowhere to apply for one.
00:39 The ACT's Master Builders Association says the permit process needs to be improved.
00:44 It's important that government respond to those requests quickly because construction often changes from day to day on a site.
00:51 Residents in Garin say they've been dealing with streets clogged by construction vehicles for years.
00:56 We've got a lot of overflow parking from the people working on the hospital at the moment that are basically filling up the streets all around the shops.
01:05 It causes more than an inconvenience.
01:07 Things like not being able to put their bins out on the street, parking across pedestrian crossings, blocking driveways in a way that blocks sight lines.
01:14 Robert wants the government to investigate whether tradies could park at the former COVID surge centre nearby.
01:20 Surely that could be a good solution to the overflow that we're seeing all around our streets in Garin.
01:25 The ACT government says it's working to improve the situation but that parking for construction workers is the responsibility of developers.
01:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]