CONRAD St traders are furious Brimbank City Council has rejected their plea for extra parking.
A petition with 723 signatures was presented to the council in August, calling to increase the number of car parks near the Conrad St shopping strip in St Albans.
Traders and residents previously told Star there had been a number of accidents and shops were losing business because the 37 spaces along Conrad and Walter St were not enough (Out of space, St Albans Star, 23 August).
Council’s General Manager of Infrastructure and Environment Paul Younis said council officers had carried out a traffic survey but found “at no stage during the nine hour period were all parking spaces fully occupied”.
Mr Younis said creating additional car spaces could cost more than $50,000 and said the supermarket were supposed to have built an additional six spaces as part of a 2006 planning permit, but had not yet done so.
Administrator Meredith Sussex said the report had made it “clear” that the cost of providing more spaces wasn’t justified.
However, she said council would review the possibility of time-restricted parking.
“A lot of people have indicated this is a problem,” Ms Sussex said.
“If it continues to increase we’ll need to consider our options.”
But FoodWorks supermarket owner Ali Khala said the council’s decision was “a joke”.
“We sent them a petition, we didn’t even get a response, not even a phone call,” Mr Khala said.
“That (six car parks) was if the supermarket did an extension, which we never did.”
He said traders were still seeing near-misses and accidents every day in the carpark, but that most of the customers were bypassing the shopping strip.
“It’s just jam packed, no-one can park anywhere so they drive off,” Mr Khala said.
He said the council’s decision had “shocked” petitioners but said they would continue to lobby the council to improve the car parking.
