Is Visitor Parking Fee for the Great Ocean Road a symbol of considered Policy determination?
The past week has seen a very curious development in the quality of Park Policy development in Australia and in this case, it was regarding Visitor Management along the Great Ocean Road by the Great Ocean Road Parks Authority.
The Policy development of a Visitor Parking fee ended with a sense of a community win and the news headlines:
“State government denies proposed plans to charge visitors along Victoria's Great Ocean Road parking fees”
So, why did this policy development fail?
Clearly, the proposal wasn’t well articulated and seemingly wasn’t well thought thru.? However, this is always difficult to assess as the community won’t have access to briefing notes and draft reports. And it is unclear what the strategic intent or driver was – a clear strategic action in the Authority’s Corporate Plan or a direction from the Government.
Nevertheless, there are two interesting elements of what happened in engaging the community, that I will explore (briefly):
Visitor Parking Fee?
Generally, in deciding to introduce Visitor Parking fees is generally for park management as tool or option to manage visitor numbers especially if access to that park is in high demand or exceeds the capacity.? There are numerous examples of this situation in Australia.?
And generally you look at 4 broad areas:
·????? Visitor demand and capacity (including quality of service)
·????? Equity and access
·????? Socio-economic impact
·????? Regional context
So, simply has the Great Ocean Road reached capacity.? Clearly that maybe the case during the peak summer holidays but definitely not during most of the other times of the year.
There was no clarity in the proposed policy that it was about addressing peak season issues.?
In a tourism sense, you might introduce a visitor parking fee for the peak season, if your intent was to shift visitor use patterns to the shoulder or off-peak season – which would be great for local businesses and the broader economic and park outcomes – but once again the policy provided no clarity on this.
Also, in the Peak Season are all places along the Great Ocean Road over capacity – probably not – so parking fees might make sense at the 12 Apostles but maybe not at remote locations or a Wye River – but once again the policy provided no clarity on this.
However, even if a parking fee was applied for the Peak Season, how do we treat equity and thus accessibility.? This isn’t just “locals” versus “the Visitors” but is a typical Local Government High Street shopping dilemma (which is basically customer (visitor) management) – where they allow 2 free hour parking to facilitate fair access to all and if you wish to stay longer you pay.? For a visitor to the beach during summer – what is fair access – well probably at least 4 hours considering how far you have driven and it is a day trip - but once again the policy provided no clarity on this.
There is a dilemma in this model of accessibility especially for the 12 Apostles – which is a destination and usually visitors have travelled for the day from as far away as Melbourne and if you did and couldn’t get a carpark as it is full, this is an extremely poor quality of service outcome.? Major iconic destinations? around the world such as the Eiffel Tower or Yosemite – you can book and secure your entrance for a given day (and time).? ?There seems to be no appreciation of this challenge.
There is a Socio-economic barrier to this proposal, as a day trip to the beach is a significant cost burden for many, especially those who can’t afford to rent a place to stay along the Great Ocean Road and thus additional and maybe time limited parking might be a significant cost of living burden and thus restrict access to an important part of the community that needs access to nature.? This is especially important as this is the main beach destination for western suburbs communities of Melbourne.
The proposal was for public land controlled by Great Ocean Road Park Authority, however the Otway’s and Great Ocean Road is actually a system of land managers (where the major destinations are actually towns) and thus there needs to be a collaborative (regional) approach to this challenge.? Any decision by the Park Authority will only result in shifting the problem to another land manager – not a result anyone wants or needs and will not benefit the region in anyway.? This is very surprising given that the genesis of the Great Ocean Road Park Authority, was a major review aimed at:
Tourism and Major Events Minister John Eren said the taskforce would be used to put the multiple agencies involved with the Great Ocean Road on the same page.
"There are a number of different authorities and organisations that try to do their best to bring more attractions, to bring more business to the area so that the expenditure, the yield of tourists, increases," Mr Eren said.
"We need a coordinated approach."
This proposal clearly fails this test.
Clearly the proposed policy provided no clarity on these key areas of visitor management nor a logical, evidence based reason for considering a visitor parking fee.
Consequence of a poor proposal
The dilemma of an incomplete policy proposal and thus stakeholder and community engagement, is community outcry which generally results in the Government pulling the proposal.? Sadly, this has happened consistently over the decades regarding concepts , as we have been down this road before such as on Phillip Island, previous considerations for the 12 Apostles and the national and international best practice studies into fee management in parks.
The question: Is there clear Government Policy for parking fees on public land?
If not, there needs to be clarity. And there needs to be a emphasis on well informed and considered policy development that includes a much more sophisticated collaborative model including the community.?
The other curious question that the Community engagement phase of the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks for the consultation Visitor Parking Fees raised is:
This is actually a larger question that is both a strategic issue, how funding was established for the new Authority and what is best practice and thus options available for the Authority.? I will follow up with another article about this however, I found it strange that it was a question in the survey for Visitor Parking fee, as it indicates that the issue may not be visitor management but a funding issue for the Authority.?
?
?
Neil McCarthy
Executive Director, Mosaic Insights
Former CEO of World Urban Parks
Former General Manager Parks – Parks Victoria
Member of the World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN)
Disclosure Statement: