It’s not often that I defend mall operators Westfield – in fact usually I’m slamming them for the auto-oriented, pedestrian hostile designs of their shopping malls. But there’s an article in today’s Herald which is just stupidly harsh on Westfield doing something reasonable that I feel compelled to offer them a bit of support.
The article is related to the apparent “shock revelation” that Westfield are going to start fining people $45 for parking longer than the four hour limit. Here’s what is said:
Some of the country’s biggest shopping centres are preparing to hit shoppers with $45 parking fines, a leaked memo reveals.
Those shopaholics who stay more than four hours in the malls’ expansive car parks – which once boasted free parking – will be ticketed.
Westfield malls at West City and Manukau have already begun fining shoppers, and St Lukes will begin doing so next month. Similar schemes are planned for Queensgate in Lower Hutt, and Riccarton in Christchurch. Saturday shoppers were dismayed by the idea of Westfield penalising them while they spent money inside.
The weird thing is that most shopping malls have three or four hour parking limits and have had them for a very long time. The point is to stop staff taking up customer parking spaces and to stop people using the mall carparks as “park and ride” facilities. In places like Albany and Manukau, I guess there could be quite a strong incentive for people to use the mall carparks as giant park and ride facilities. While that might be good for public transport use, I can see why Westfield might get a bit grumpy about it.
St Lukes regular Megan Smith said she would not take the $45 fine lying down.
“It’s got ‘money-making scheme’ written all over it,” she said. “Westfield are starting to seem like a huge corporate parking monster.”
Kaitaia woman Amber Prouting travels to Auckland several times a year to do “big shops”, and said she would sometimes spend an entire day inside the mall. “A four-hour limit will make that difficult,” she said. Other shoppers said they would choose different malls.
I really wish people would stop thinking about parking restrictions – whether they’re in the form of paying for parking or in the form of limiting the time of parking, as a money-making venture. The point is to ensure there’s a decent level of parking turnover. If parking wasn’t time-restricted or charged for in any high demand areas, the chances of every finding a space would be very very low – and who wins then?
To be honest, I always thought if you parked for longer than four hours at a shopping mall you risked getting your car towed. I’m pretty sure that’s what a lot of the signs around many of the malls say. The frustrating thing now is that Westfield will probably have to back down, people will park all over the mall carpark forever (well hopefully they might end up being park and rides) and nobody visiting the shops will be able to find a carpark.
If you want to park longer than 4hrs then you are asked to go to the customer services desk and get a pass. Pretty simple, for those who are actually in the mall shopping or going to a movie.
Why not just offer $50 all day parking?
It’s private land. Its not like Westfield is forcing people
to park there and shop for more than 4 hours (wow, what are they buying, an elephant or something?) against their will.
Sometimes I wonder if road rage and strange reactions to things like this have to do with people thinking that their car is some kind of psychological extension of their body.
Go to a two-hour movie, have a leisurely meal, do a bit of shopping, bam, you’re well toward four hours.
As far as was aware, Westfield Albany have had a four-hour limit for ages, and they do enforce it from time to time.
Another point is if they back down on the four hour restriction, then what about the 5/10/15 minute restrictions.
People need to get real. Malls in some cities in other countries work on either a “pay and display” or “pay at the cashier” princible. So count yourself lucky having free parking. If it was parking on the street the council would have charged us and towed us…
As I said people need a reality check.
It is a strange thing in NZ that carparking is seen as something that should be free and that any form of charging or fining people for overstaying is simply a money making exercise. People fail to realise that this is a limited resource and actually costs a lot of money, in land and construction costs, to supply.
Well it still pisses me off that every time I go to a mall which contains free parking that I’m in-directly subsidising people like Megan Smith everytime I buy something.
Megan, time to say thanks to those who either can’t or won’t drive and start paying your fair share.
This infuriates me – what right do corporates and their hired gun security firms have to impose fines on anyone??
How would they enforce such a fine? I assume they’ll clamp people? I carry bolt cutters these days for just such an eventuality – I (carefully) cut the clamp off my car and drove away once before, and, lo, after an exchange of letters along the lines of “I’ll see you in hell before I pay your goons a cent oh and by the way yes I can afford a lawyer” nothing at all happened – I guess they decided the cost of a civil action wasn’t worth it.
Sanctuary, the corporates have the right since you are parking on their land.
Who gives you the right to damage their property?
Hope they catch you next time and you are given community service to clean the rubbish at the mall, with a sign on you back saying what you have done.
You ARE living in the real world, so grow up and get with the program.
You were lucky they didn’t a) serve you with a trespass notice for all their properties, b) push charges against you for wilful damage, c) send the fine to Baycorp. These are all perfectly valid, available options. In their position I would’ve done all three, and you would’ve been screwed so long as I didn’t do something silly like not signposting the time limit and that fines/clamping would be imposed.
Legally they’re entirely in the right, again provided that they make it very clear that exceeding the limit will result in being clamped and fined. It’s their land, not public land, so they can set whatever conditions they so choose provided that they make it perfectly clear. They could legally require you to hop on one leg for three minutes before allowing you to park, and there’d be nothing you could do about it except whinge to the media about how ridiculous they’re being.
What Matt said. With an attitude like that, and if you really did that, yo’re a bully.
* typo, yo’re = you’re
The Westfields in Newmarket and Takapuna charge for parking.
I don’t know how the Takapuna system works (I think it’s free parking up to a certain time, then is chargeable), but in Newmarket you present a mall till receipt or Eftpos slip ($5 minimum) with your parking ticket for up to two hours of free parking. Why can’t something like this be adopted at other mall carparks?
A more automated way of doing this than the exit-booth attendants at Newmarket is to have carpark ticket validation machines at all mall retailers.
You could, for example, get two hours free parking with a purchase, and if you validate your ticket at the mall cinema cashier, get another three hours’ worth.
IIRC it is first two hours free at Takapuna, then a few dollars an hour. They actually have a section of the carpark for commuters/staff, which is charged at a day rate.
In any case, the Westfields really don’t LIKE charging for parking. I’ve had discussions with them on that years ago, and they consider that it’s generally not worth it as long as their competitors don’t charge (i.e. they discourage visitors to their own centres by doing it). They only do it when and where there’s a problem with workers or comutters using the free parking as an all-day spot (i.e. in Newmarket or Downtown, or close to train stations).
And to top it off, where there are attendants, they are often quite cordial – during Christmas break, I shopped at 277, and lost the receipt for the 3 Dollar (or was it 5 Dollar) minimum purchase that would have given me free parking. After seeing the shopping bags on the passenger seat, the guy simply waved me through even though it lost Westfield a good 7$ income. They also let people go without checking when the exit queues get too long.
I actually like the idea of having paid parking but having it waived if you have brought something like what is done at 277. By having it that way I will buy something that I wouldn’t have otherwise and I’m sure there are a lot of others that do that as well so there must be some benefit for Westfield from it.
I actually think it would be smart for one of the mall operators to do something similar for a park n ride type system as a way to get more return off their parking which at most malls is largely empty during the work day for the majority of the year. It could be fairly easy to implement using the integrated ticket perhaps have the parking provided either free or very cheaply providing the card holder spends more than a set amount at the mall each week/day. I could see this being quite easy to implement at Manukau, Sylvia Park, New Lynn and Henderson which all have malls with a lot of parking extremely close to a train station. It would benefit the mall owners because more people would be spending money at their meaning they could pass the costs onto the shops.
An example of this is, someone lives in Avondale and shops at the Mt Albert Pak n Save just up the road. Instead they might drive the same distance to New Lynn and park at the mall and to get the free parking they swap to doing their weekly shop at the countdown in the mall which they do one night after work after getting off the train.
In some other countries they just paste a large sticker on the middle of your windscreen if you are parked beyond the limit, and you need to scrape it off before you can drive again. No revenue grab.
Similar thing has been done for speeders, where they are forced to wait in their car at the speed check site for 30 minutes in lieu of a fine.
Didn’t they once do the stickers here too? I seem to recall as a small child in the mid eighties my mum having to scrape off a couple of those (we had a bus stop outside our house). I’m not sure, but maybe the bus drivers themselves carried them?
“Sometimes I wonder if road rage and strange reactions to things like this have to do with people thinking that their car is some kind of psychological extension of their body.”
BrisUrbane – I think you are perfectly right on the money. For many, this si quite true. Even I, who don’t really drive much, consider my car as “my zone”. Once inside it, I’m halfway “home” already. So some people get pretty emotional about anything like that. Of course, in this case, they are also the type people who would use this ‘extended body’ to rudely treat others, whether on the road (“My road!”) or parking, so they still deserve what’s coming.