Cars parked up the narrow Ely St in central city.
Residents of a narrow residential street in central Christchurch street are fed up with fighting for car parks on their own street.
Apartment blocks in Ely St have brought more people and more cars to the narrow, T-shaped street off Madras and Salisbury streets.
Car parks are limited and residents are being fined for illegal parking.
Cars parked up the narrow Ely St in central city.
Ely St resident Joseph Veale said the parking available for residents was "ridiculous".
"It's definitely a struggle finding a park on the street and I'd say a lot of that's due to the houses they've put up over the last few years.
"Council hasn't allocated parking situations for the new builds . . . They've cheekily chucked four or five houses in when it should only be a one or two."
Veale said the street was "pretty rammed" with people parking on the kerbs to allow traffic flow within the narrow street.
"It's a skinny road and both sides fill up with cars.
"People started parking on the footpath so cars can get past and obviously, they get tickets."
Veale had received a couple of parking tickets himself, which he said was a "pain in the ass".
Moa Residents Association chairman Barry Brooker said Ely St was "a bit of a jungle", particularly in the morning and overnight.
"They are real problems and some are to do with the boarding house type places which some potentially have up to 30 people with two parking spaces so where do people go?"
This week, the Linwood-Heathcote-Central Community Board made a submission to the Christchurch City Council to prioritise finding solutions to Ely St parking in the council's next annual plan.
"Parking and safety issues have been made worse over recent years with housing intensification on the street," it said.
The number of residences in the street had more than tripled, but the same number of car parks were available.
"There are a number of issues," Christchurch Central ward councillor Deon Swiggs said.
The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority's district plan review "changed a whole lot of the make up of the city centre".
The density of housing in the inner city blueprint failed to take into account the need for off-street parking, he said.
"That's a double whammy of issues here. There are a lot of central city streets which are the same.
"One solution isn't going to solve it all which is why I think it would be good to go back to council to get the traffic engineers to look at this, find a plan and consult with the communities who are actually affected to find a solution," Swiggs said.
The council wants public feedback on the annual plan by May 5.
- Stuff
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