Four station car parks worth $65 million in Melbourne's inner east were dropped after local opposition and an audit criticised the federal scheme that funded them.
Four commuter car parks promised for railway stations in Melbourne's Kooyong electorate were abandoned in March 2022. The projects, at Surrey Hills, Canterbury, Glenferrie and Camberwell, were worth a combined $65 million and had faced opposition from local residents.
They were part of the Coalition government's $660 million commuter car park program under the Urban Congestion Fund, which promised 47 car parks around the country. An Auditor-General's report found the program had no criteria for assessing merit, and that more than three-quarters of the promised car parks were in Coalition-held seats. An internal spreadsheet had also tracked the "top 20 marginals".
At the time of the report, only two of the car parks had been completed and six had already been abandoned.
The four scrapped projects were in the seat held by then-Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, whose margin had narrowed at the 2019 election.
When promised station car parks do not arrive, commuters keep competing for limited spaces, so a private driveway or garage within walking distance of a busy station can be a practical option to rent, or to offer for rent.
Photo: Philip Mallis / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Passenger car park at Camberwell railway station, Melbourne.