A new round of parking tensions is brewing between the University of Wollongong and its neighbours, as residents brace for high-rise student accommodation developments that will increase the population of Keiraville by more than 30 per cent.
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UOW has attended multiple neighbourhood meetings in recent months and vowed to consider introducing measures including a car-sharing scheme, in a bid to address residents’ concerns about streets being used ‘‘like long-term parking lots’’.
Neighbourhood Forum 5 representative Bess Moylan said she remained worried the new accommodation had been ‘‘under-designed’’.
New residences for more than 1000 students are to be built on Northfields Avenue and within Kooloobong Village, on the western boundary of UOW’s main campus, by 2018.
They will include 158 car spaces – one for every 7.2 students, according to UOW. By contrast, new accommodation towers completed last year in Kooloobong Village provide one car space for every five students.
Dr Moylan said even the 1:5 ratio had resulted in about 40cars regularly spilling out of Kooloobong Village on to an unpopulated part of Robsons Road, where they remained for extended periods.
Residents were worried the influx of new student residents would push the parking overflow into populated streets.
‘‘I don’t think [1:7.2] is going to be enough,’’ Dr Moylan said. ‘‘If there’s going to be parking overflow, there’s really nowhere else for it to go but into the suburbs.
‘‘People who live in Keiraville and Gwynneville understand that people are going to park in their street, but there’s a difference between student and staff parking [for several hours] and campus residents parking – they stay a week in some cases.’’
The neighbourhood forum’s Felix Bronneberg said long-term on-street parking caused problems with visibility, garbage collection, safety and the freedom of residents to have their visitors park out the front.
‘‘In certain parts of Keiraville, the double parking has reduced the street to a one-way street,’’ he said.
The neighbourhood forum has repeatedly requested an access and movement study be jointly funded by Roads and Maritime Services, UOW and Wollongong City Council, so the scope of Keiraville/Gwynneville parking issues may be laid bare.
But the forum said any study now would likely come too late.
An international consortium – Living + Learning Partners – is poised to start construction on the first of the accommodation towers in July 2015, having entered into a 39-year agreement to take over UOW’s entire accommodation portfolio. Under the agreement, announced on Friday, the Balfour Beatty Investments-led consortium will get an undisclosed share of student rents; while UOW will retain control over the day-to-day operations of all residences.
UOW’s Melva Crouch said the university was considering introducing a car-sharing scheme such as GoGet – where members pay an hourly or daily fee to use a shared car that is left on-site – and was investigating the prospect of long-term, off-site paid parking for students who would then be shuttled to campus.
Ms Crouch said the university had carried out its own ‘‘detailed research’’ on the potential effects of the new accommodation developments.
‘‘Our modelling suggests that, with the implementation of transport management strategies, the impact of overspill parking on local roads will be minimal.’’