Bay watch: parking operators' fury over levy

PARKING station operators have told the NSW Government they will begin closing bays next month, when a 110 per cent increase in parking tax renders thousands of spots unviable.

Operators are now advising motorists of massive increases in parking fees, with Star City casino in Pyrmont lifting its daily rate for corporate customers next week from $13 to $20. Wilson Parking is lifting fees by about $80 a month the equivalent of 30 to 40 per cent for many customers.

The huge fee increases flow from last year's mini-budget decision to lift the parking levy from $950 in the city and surrounding districts, including North Sydney and Milsons Point, to $2000 a year, ostensibly to reduce congestion on the roads and improve public transport.

Car park operators dismiss these claims and say doubling the levy is simply a tax grab and will make congestion worse by encouraging drivers to cruise around searching for parking meters, which will be cheaper than parking stations.

A Star City spokesman said part of the increase was due to the levy, but part was also attributable to a review of rates to bring them into line with competitors.

In a position paper to the Government, car park operators say the rises will make thousands of early bird parking spots unviable, especially those in the areas on the fringe of the city such as Darling Harbour and Pyrmont, where early bird parking is still available for $9.

The paper says that assuming a 21-day working month, a $9 fee would mean $7.92 went to the levy and 82 cents to GST, leaving just 25 cents for the operator and owner of the parking station.

The chief executive of Wilson Parking, Craig Smith, said while operators could theoretically lift prices by $4 a day to make up the additional levy, such a sharp increase would stop many people parking. "'We are likely to see bays roped off and shut."

Operators have lobbied the Government for months to soften the increases and treat Darling Harbour like areas such as Parramatta, where the levy is about half the CBD..

From July 1, the levy will be exactly 10 times the amount of the original $200 levy that was introduced in 1992 by the Greiner government.

One of the gripes of parking station operators is a retrospective aspect to the legislation, which requires them to pay tax on the number of parking spots they had in this financial year, even though the tax does not come into force until the following year.

The Sydney Fish Market says it increased its minimum parking charge from $2 to $3 in January to help offset the cost of the retrospective levy.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Transport denied the levy was retrospective and said last year's parking bay numbers were used to provide a base for calculating the tax.

But the head of the Tourism and Transport Forum, Christopher Brown, insisted it was retrospective and said that was a big problem. "So businesses will have to find 110 per cent more money than last year to pay this bill, which they found out about [only] in mid-November, and so were not able to properly plan or budget for," he said.

"Hitting hotels with the increased levy will make no difference to the Government's stated aims of reducing peak hour road congestion, as hotel parking spaces are not used for commuter parking."