Does Westport really need another car park?

POLICY PROBLEM A change in parking policy could incentivise people to make more use of Westport’s off-street and edge-of-town car parks.


Guest Column
Kieran Ryan

A recent meeting of the West Mayo Municipal District heard calls from local councillors for the development of a new multi-storey car park in Westport. But does the town really need more car parking spaces?
This is a question which volunteers from the 15-Minute Westport community group set out to answer, and we spent a full year conducting monthly surveys of the town, counting the number of available car parking spaces.
The surveys ran from December 2021 to December 2022, and counts were carried out on Saturday and Wednesday afternoons each month to see how weekdays compared to weekends.
Across the 21 counts conducted, there was an average of 262 unoccupied public car parking spaces within a five-minute walking distance of Bridge Street. This equates to 23 percent of the existing public parking spaces in Westport.
As well as public parking spaces, we also surveyed several business and institutional car parks. The surface car park at the Westpoint Shopping Centre on Altamount Street has a capacity of 342 and the average number of spaces unoccupied was 144, a vacancy rate of 33 percent. The underground car park at Westpoint had an average vacancy rate of 80 percent.
The survey was organised and conducted by volunteers from 15-Minute Westport, a local community group that advocates for sustainable transport. Local councillors were regularly invited to join us on the counts, including Cllr Christy Hyland, who proposed the new multi-storey car park, but none of them were able to make it.
You might be wondering why local councillors are calling for a new car park to be built if there are so many spaces available in Westport on an average day? This begs the question about whether we are using our existing parking spaces wisely, and whether we are giving people viable alternatives to using their car for daily trips.
There are better, and smarter, ways to manage car parking in Westport, ways that wouldn’t require the massive capital investment, disruption or carbon footprint of building a new multi-storey car park in the middle of the town.
The current parking policy in Westport, where on-street parking is free of charge for the first hour, creates a culture where many drivers see on-street parking as their first and only option.
During our monthly parking surveys we often witnessed people driving laps of the town until an on-street space became available right outside their destination. This in itself contributes to traffic congestion, with drivers circling the town looking for spaces while there are plenty of spaces available in the off-street car parks or on the edge of the town centre.
A change in parking policy could incentivise people to make more use of the off-street car parks, and to park on the edge of the town centre and walk the last few metres to their destination.
This policy shift would also free up more spaces and better access for Blue Badge users, enabling them to park with confidence nearer to their destinations. More loading bays could also be created, allowing for smoother – and less disruptive – deliveries to local businesses.
Some existing parking spaces could also be repurposed as public seating areas or parklets, with hard surfaces giving way to more trees and plants; Better for drainage, for air quality, for pollinators and for our wellbeing.
Encouraging more people to park in off-street car parks and at the edge of town can also provide an economic boost by increasing the ‘dwell time’ of visitors. If people park in a car park and walk to their destination – instead of parking right outside it – they will pass other businesses along the way and be more likely to carry out more errands on a single trip. This simple shift in behaviour creates more footfall across the town and gives more businesses the opportunity to attract more customers through their doors.
It is ironic that the free one-hour parking, which is intended to help businesses, actually discourages people from spending more time in the town. Instead of taking their time – and spending more money – people are rationing their time and panicking about getting back to their cars as quickly as possible.
Having spent a full year assessing the demand for car parking in Westport, we are confident that a new multi-storey car park is neither necessary nor justified. Instead, a more sustainable approach should be taken which encourages and enables people to walk, cycle and use public transport for their daily trips to and from the town centre.

Kieran Ryan is member of 15-Minute Westport. The group’s full parking survey report is available on www.15minutewestport.com or from westsec21@gmail.com.