Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: Who's paying $74 a day to park in the city?

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Andrew Dickens: Who's paying $74 a day to park in the city? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: News that Wilson Parking and Fort Street Auckland is the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: most expensive parking in New Zealand says a lot more
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: than just about the company that is absolutely creaming it.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: And you know it. If you turn up first thing
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: at this Wilson car park and you use the on
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: site machine and you want to park for a day,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: this will cost you, wait for it, seventy four dollars
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: a day. Now, who pays seventy four bucks for a
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: day's park? If you go there and you park casually,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: it will cost you twenty two dollars an hour. Now,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: hold on, what was the minimum wage? What did I say?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: The minimum wage was, Oh, it's just under the minimum wage,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: but anyway, it's pretty close. So obviously minimum wage people
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: aren't going to be parking at this Wilson's car park.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I'm picking that if you park in this park, you
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: are not working in hospital, you're earning enough to blow
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: money like this. You don't feel like you have an alternative,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and you love your car and you want to park
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: near work, so you pay seventy four bucks. Let's break
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that down average wage and allan seventy two thousand a
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: year after tax. That's nine hundred dollars a week. The
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: media rent is seven hundred dollars a week. You need
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: one hundred dollars a week for power, phone, internet and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: gas and oh, by the way, you need to eat.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: So where's a spare money for that park? At seventy
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: four dollars for a day, the only people paying that
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: are paid way more than seventy two grand on having
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: no alternatives, well, we don't have any. Fifty percent of
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the workers in Auckland CBDD take public transport into work.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: That's because they don't get a park from their employer
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and they don't earn enough to face the parking charges.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: After all, seventy four dollars a day twenty two bucks
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: an hour. It's not their choice to take the public transport,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: it's an economic necessity. That's why public transport is critical
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to our productivity. Fifty percent of the workers in the
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: CBD need it. Remember that the next time you can
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: plain about a bus lane. And finally, we love our
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: cars because actually there are plenty of cars. Sorry, there
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: are plenty of parks. They don't cost seventy four bucks
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: an hour in the CBD, like the city owned downtown
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: car park, a car park which on most days is
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: half empty, which which is why the council has now
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: sold the car park to developers to become a skyscraper
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: because it's half empty. Part there you may have to walk,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: so many don't and so they go and pay a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: fortune on waste of productivity. Eh there's here's the thing.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: The fact that so many orchands are prepared to pay
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: so much to park a car and the CBD makes
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: me believe that the idea of congestion charges reducing traffic
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: will fail because we're prepared to pay this rubbish. We're
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: just going to pay to stay stuck in the same
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: traffic queues. For more from Early edition with Ryan Bridge.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Listen live to News Talks it Be from five am weekdays,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio