This map may look ridiculous, that's because it is. But it is also the truth. Each car icon, including the smallest ones, represents 5 cars that will have to be parked on street.

In the Glo building where I live, which is entirely representative of new developments in the Ashmore precinct, there are 91 apartments. We have 97 parking spaces made up of 82 resident, 13 visitor and 2 disabled spots. The demand for parking is so high that despite 90% of our apartments having their own space, and many signs and warnings indicating that residents must not park in visitor spaces, quite a few still do. This leads to the visitor parking being full on occassion, so some visitors must park on-street. Some residents with two cars pay over $200 per month for a car space. This problem is the direct result of an underprovision of parking, and indirectly an underprovision of public transport and other options.

It all takes significant resources of the strata committee to monitor and police. It often leads to violation notices being served. The point however is that average car ownership rates in the area clearly must be at least 0.9 cars per apartment.

The parking allocation for the amended Ashmore DCP is around 0.65 spaces per apartment. Even if this included no visitor parking at all, with 3250 new apartments, this would mean about 1000 new resident cars would need to be parked on street every night. I have put about 200 car icons on the above graphic, hence the figure of 5 real cars for every car icon.

I've learnt from all this that car usage is not the same as car ownership.  I have a family of 4, I ride a bike to work and we all walk a lot; we drive only 5000km a year, less than half the state average. But of course we still need and own a car. It has to be parked somewhere.

Do the math, Clover & Barry. 

Andrew Chuter

Erko resident, maths teacher & voter