Prior to the 1960s, Hamilton city’s car parking was based on property owners’ willingness to supply and car owners’ willingness to pay (parking space being real estate). This is a free market-based approach shaped by supply and demand of storage space, which can be found in places like Japan and Germany according to this Blog site: Reinventing parking: which cities have abolished parking
In the 1960s, the City of Hamilton District Scheme Minimum Parking Requirements (MPR) were introduced, as follows:
The 1970s City of Hamilton District Scheme added under Section 10, Roading and Parking:
The above rules are very clear: don’t park across the footpath; keep carriageways free for moving traffic; if you are a private industry you must provide for storage, loading and unloading of vehicles elsewhere than on the public streets. Do we need more rules?
The above picture shows how land zoned “industrial” is being used. If I have read the MPR correctly (please check links below) Hamilton’s latest MPRs are very friendly to industry, allowing businesses to set their own level of parking by having very low MPRs and not setting a Maximum Parking Requirement which offers limited benefit, especially if there is weak on-street parking management as we can see in Cowley road Cambridge UK
The graph above gives good reason for the council to allow industry freedom. From the 20-odd surveys, parking demand could be close to 4 per 100m2 for some and below 1 per 100m2 for many (does anyone have access to these surveys?). This tell us what we already know and illustrates why it is not normal to just predict and provide for the very fast-changing manufacturing industries,
“because of the significant variations in the extent to which differing manufacturing processes are labour or capital intensive.” (Page55 NZTA reports 374)
Source references
1963 – City of Hamilton District Scheme – Central Library: NZ711-409-931-151-HAM
Geelong planning schemes 52_06 Car Parking
Houston TX – planning develop regs – offstreet – Chapter26_Ordinance_march_2013
Hamilton Proposed District Plans Chapter 18 & 25.14 Transportation plus Appendix 15
Page 111 Comparison of retail parking rates from NZ and overseas.
Page 162 Table 15-2A: Number of parking, loading and cycle spaces