Yarra CarPark

Yarra Park on a match day - a scandalous way to treat a heritage park

Yarra Park is part of the "emerald necklace" of parkland that surrounds inner Melbourne. It embodies the vision of Governor Charles La Trobe and planner Robert Hoddle for open space around the central city where the people of the new settlement could breathe and find rest and inspiration.

It is a large park of over 35 hectares (excluding sports grounds) around the MCG.

The park has two scarred trees - linking our age with the stewardship of the Wurundjeri people, who roamed this area for generations, time out of mind. There are many other old and significant trees.

Yarra Park is also important historically as the site where Australian Rules football originated, with the first recorded games being played here in 1858. Then known as Melbourne's "village green", Yarra Park contained the city's first recreation reserve.

It was here that the athletes of the world came for the Olympic Games in 1956, and for the Commonwealth Games in 2006.

For residents of East Melbourne and Jolimont, and of Richmond across Punt Road, Yarra Park is a place for recreation and reflection, for jogging, walking the dog, picnics, and just taking a quiet stroll.

It seems barely credible that anyone would take the crass decision to use this precious green space as somewhere to park cars for over 220 days a year - but that is the situation which has come about through a failure of leadership by successive governments. The park is used for parking by thousands of patrons visiting the MCG - even though there are good public transport alternatives all around. Parking thousands of cars on Yarra Park degrades this green space: it causes obvious damage to the lawns, and by compacting the soil is also killing the trees.

Is this the way we treat this historic legacy - as a cut price parking lot?

The Commonwealth Games were held at the MCG in 2006, and they were run without any parking on Yarra Park. Public transport was easily able to cope with the very high demand.

The community and the Melbourne City Council were working towards complete removal of parking from Yarra Park, but then in 2009 the Brumby government stymied them. Supported in parliament by the Liberal Party, Labor handed management of this park to the MCG Trust. This was done expressly to facilitate ongoing parking on Yarra Park. As the Minister's media release blandly put it:

The legislation also ensures adequate parking to support major events at the MCG.

The Greens opposed the move at every turn: the parks and gardens of Melbourne are the envy of the world.

This park belongs to the people of Melbourne and should not be handed to a private corporation like the MCG. Too much public space has been corporatized as it is.

It's fun going to the cricket or the footy at the MCG - how much better it would be, instead of dodging revving cars and picking our way past their churned up mud, to stroll through pleasant parkland to get there.

Since the government's decision, the Heritage Council has determined - over objection from the MCG and others - that Yarra Park is "of cultural heritage significance and should be included on the Heritage Register". The government ought to take note of this landmark decision. They should immediately remove the blight of parked cars from our heritage.

There is no justification for putting cars on the lawns and under the trees of Yarra Park. It should remain what it was always intended to be - a park for people, not for cars.

External links

• Heritage Council decision
• Petition to have Yarra Park for People not Cars
• Greens motion in the Legislative Council
• Teed off on MCG Parking - Melbourne Leader
• Heritage Listing - Melbourne Leader
• Save Yarra Park
• Yarra Park Association
• The Parkway to Ruin - Melbourne Leader

Hoddle Highway?

Hoddle Street beside Collingwood Town Hall

- just the other side of the Town Hall runs the Hurstbridge/Epping rail line

Each morning Hoddle Street is choked with traffic. The government has committed to a $5 million study “to investigate ways to improve the efficiency and reliability of all modes of transport along and across Hoddle Street from Eastern Freeway to just north of the M1 Freeway”.

Although the proposal is to improve "all modes of transport" the study is being conducted by VicRoads. The focus on Hoddle Street, separate from the other major transport routes with which it interrelates, suggests there will be a focus on cars and roads, rather than, for example, trains.

Close examination of the Project Description, which forms part of the Hoddle Street Study Scope document (downloadable from the home page of the Study) shows that the real purpose of this study is nothing other than roadworks. It is an engineering study to best carry out "grade separation" (ie flyovers and tunnels) along Hoddle Street:

Grade separating some of these junctions has the potential to improve the operation of Melbourne's central road system for cars, trams, buses and commercial vehicles.

The Government will allocate $5 million to commence engineering investigations to determine the feasibility of grade separating key junctions on Hoddle Street. A key element in these investigations will be to assess how disruption to traffic could best bee minimised during any construction works.

Rail will not be considered. Nor any other more imaginative options. It's just lots of road building. Disruption "to traffic" will be considered, but not to residents or parklands.

Each morning at peak hour Hoddle Street carries in total some 8000 vehicles. There is an average of 1.1 people per vehicle. Most of the traffic is heading into the city.

The best capacity roads can achieve is about 700 cars per hour per lane. Hoddle Street is already very close to that level of use, so the benefit from expensive grade separation is necessarily minimal.

Let's take a look at how people move in the area during the mornings at present:

People movement in Hoddle Street area

In addition to the 8000 cars along Hoddle Street, there are about 12,000 cars going along the cross streets. Along the cross streets, buses move about 4500 people at present. Trams move about 4200 people.

But the big people mover is rail. Trains in the vicinity of Hoddle Street move 80,000 people each morning. Whilst the cars sit in their traffic jams, fully loaded trains whisk by.

The train system has a lot of room for more efficiency - more frequent trains would get many more people into the city in less time. Those who have to travel by car would do so more easily.

Hoddle Street is crowded because cars are such an inefficient way to move people in numbers. The billions of dollars in upgrading Hoddle Street would be better spent upgrading the rail system.

And that's even before we've talked about peak oil or carbon emissions - or bicycles.

Residents certainly don't want this Hoddle Highway white elephant. It will mean using Yarra Park as a construction site for years, and major disruption to the local area. The Greens held a public meeting in the East Melbourne Library last week, with numbers overflowing the venue. The opposition was unanimous, well-informed and passionate.

We want imaginative solutions that deal with the real transport needs of Melbourne. The Greens' People Plan is a great start.

External Links

The People Plan

Kathleen Maltzahn's account of the Greens' East Melbourne public meeting

Hoddle Street Study