“Parking Battle Continues” shows how easy it is to lose our parklands and environment bit by bit to commercial and political pressures.
Parking on long weekends and school holidays in Lions Park was only a temporary measure during Covid, which has ended.
The easy thing to do would have been to let it slide, rather than honour this commitment.
Council is requesting permission from the landowner, the State, to allow parking in Lions Park during Christmas ’23 and Easter ’24, as it must do and has done every year for the past 20 or so.
In the meantime, public consultation will help determine if we as a community want the entry statement to Main Beach in peak periods into the future to continue to be a car park or recreational green space. No decision has been made on that long term use.
Over the 44-day Christmas period, 7800 cars (@177 a day) parked in this recreation reserve.
During the same period, tens of thousands of cars used the 1500 purpose-built car spaces and drop off zones (on the road network) in the Main Beach precinct.
Over 164,000 people (3727 a day) preferred to travel in by bus, 8900 (200+ a day) walked, cycled or scootered in.
Over one million passengers have opted for the free bus over the car during the five years since 2018.
Times have changed over the last 20 years.
We could open up Noosa Woods to car parking also and it too would be popular, full and hard to wind back.
The Transport Strategy focuses on moving people (not exclusively cars) via a range of options about the shire. The record crowds suggest this strategy has been successful. The problem we are still grappling with is congestion.
Consultation, probably via the Destination Management Plan will help decide if we continue using this recreation reserve as a car parking lot.
Or are we ready, as custodians, to hand over a different looking Noosa to our children?
The Lions do a great job and council is committed to helping them finding other revenue sources.
In my view, there’s work to be done around investigating an off-road parking facility to handle the holiday influx of boat trailers.
