by Alan Jacques
LIMERICK Council generated €554,504 in parking fines in 2014.
O’Connell Street made €30,130; Henry Street generated €28,730; and Roches Street collected €21,180 in fines last year.
Despite generating a revenue of over half a million euros in parking fines for the Council in 2014, a spokeswoman pointed out that Limerick has the cheapest city on-street parking in Ireland at €1 per hour.
“Our enforcement policy ensures that the finite number of street parking spaces available are shared and not monopolised and that those who pay do not have to subsidise those who won’t pay,” she explained.
The local authority says that its primary development objective is to continue to grow and maintain Limerick City as the vibrant and modern urban capital that it is and the economic centre of Ireland’s Mid-West region.
Against this background, the Council maintain that traffic engineers and planners are faced with significant challenges in the area of parking management, not least operating a parking management policy that incorporates the correct pricing policy; the correct enforcement policy; the correct real time parking information data; the correct current and future parking demand data; the correct financial objectives, and adequate special needs provisions.
“The strategy is to manage on-street parking as a ‘short stay’ street destination and promote parking for periods longer than two hours in off-street car parks. The goal is to accommodate on-street demand as efficiently as possible by sharing the limited number of spaces available amongst shoppers, visitors and residents, and to a lesser degree vehicle types.”
