As lockdown ends and Canberra begins to reopen, the amount of traffic in and around our town and city centres is increasing. This means paid parking enforcement and mobile speed vans on residential streets will become more active to support community safety.
As traffic increases across the city and more students return to school, Canberrans will also see mobile speed vans back on residential streets.
Mobile speed vans will return to residential areas from 18 October 2021. This will support road safety, especially in higher risk zones such as near schools.
During lockdown, mobile speed detection vans primarily monitored main arterial roads, given many essential workers were still travelling to and from work each day.
With this change, the community can expect to see mobile speed vans more often, as well as police regularly patrolling school zones to enforce safe driving behaviours.
Together this activity supports the ACT Government’s commitment to Vision Zero – no deaths or serious injuries on our roads.
To support our essential workers during lockdown a temporary pause was put on paid parking in ACT Government-owned car parks. With the return of business and other activities, paid parking and parking enforcement will return on 1 November 2021. This means Canberrans must pay for parking in all government owned car parks and adhere to all parking restrictions from this date.
Legal and safe parking not only supports community safety but enables turnover of vehicles by limiting parking times. This provides greater accessibility for customers to businesses and workers to workplaces – supporting our return to a vibrant city.
Quotes attributable to Minister for Business and Better Regulation Tara Cheyne:
The ACT Government is pleased to have been able to support our essential workers during lockdown with free parking at ACT Government owned car parks.
As Canberra reopens and people move about more across our City, we will be resuming parking operations to ensure road safety and parking availability. This will enable greater accessibility to businesses and workplaces, supporting our local economy as we recover from the impacts of the pandemic.
Quotes attributable to Minister for Transport and City Services Chris Steel:
With more cars on the road and kids going back to school in coming weeks, it’s important for Canberrans to be road safe. Road safety is everyone’s responsibility.
40km/h school zones are in place between 8.00am and 4.00pm Monday to Friday. Speed limits in school zones are there to protect children by allowing motorists extra time to stop in an unexpected situation.
Remember to also park safely and legally – including at paid parking locations. Parking across pedestrian crossings, on street corners, across footpath and verges, and double parking create safety risks and also makes it more difficult for other motorists and pedestrians to get around our city.
Quotes attributable to Assistant Commissioner Peter Crozier, Acting Chief Police Officer for the ACT:
ACT Road Policing will still be conducting anytime, anywhere COVID-19 compliance checks throughout Canberra, but as traffic volumes increase, so will our officers’ focus on road safety activities.
Already this year, nine people have died on the ACT’s roads, and many more people have been injured. This means dozens of families grieving, or coping with major changes to their lives.
Speeding is the most common poor driver behaviour, and it is completely avoidable. I urge everyone to observe the speed limits and to drive to the conditions to stay safe on our roads.
