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Locals and visitors alike are getting increasingly frustrated with the limited amount of street parking available in the city’s eastern suburbs, as Waverley Council looks to crack down on those choosing to park over driveways. A trial to double the fine to $600 for obstructing driveways and have the vehicle towed within three hours has been launched by the council after it received a record 2136 complaints last financial year. On the weekend, barricades and security guards were snapped blocking a number of residential streets in Bondi. MORE: Aus suburbs where parking adds most to house prices The Sculpture by the Sea exhibition is currently running, with local tradie Will Collis telling news.com.au the blockages were spread throughout the suburb. He spoke to one of the guards and was reportedly told one of the reasons they were there was to “stop people from parking over driveways”. “It’s a costly, short-term fix and a sign of how reactive and outdated Sydney’s parking management has become,” the Mr Collis said. “We’re literally paying people to stand on the street to control parking behaviour, when technology could solve this in real time. “What has this parking nightmare come to where, if it’s a public street, you should be allowed to park there – it’s not private parking,” he added. Working as an electrician, the 29-year-old found he was often spending “10, 15, 20 minutes circling” to just find a parking spot when turning up to jobs. MORE: Australia’s most undervalued and overvalued suburbs He got so fed up with the paring in the area that he decided something more needed to be done. So, he created Premo, a community-driven app used to find available nearby street parking. It allows users to find spots, marked by members of the community, and a timer function to track how long they’ve been there for to avoid fines. The first live test of the app launched in Bondi earlier this month, with Mr Collis saying the feedback has been “incredible”, from tradie to locals who say it has drastically cut down the time needed to find a park. Mr Collis claimed that people driving around looking for parking also contribute to congestion on the already busy roads in major Aussie cities. “What I’ve found since launching Premo is, I’ve spent so much time on my scooter driving around the suburbs where the congestion is caused by people just looping around one or two streets, but there is actually so many parks available on the streets these people just don’t know where to look,” he said. While Mr Collis was out talking to locals over the weekend, he stopped a driver after noticing he had been circling for over half an hour looking for a park. He claimed the man was about to “give up and park illegally”, so the 29-year-old told him to download Premo and he reportedly found a park within a few minutes. “Bondi’s parking chaos has become a flashpoint for urban frustration, but it also proves how much potential there is for smarter, community-driven solutions,” he said. “Instead of paying for barricades and security, we could empower locals to share real-time information that helps everyone find a park faster.”
