Taxing plan for council
City councillor and co-owner of Kapai Restaurant Justin Lester says the plan would see a taxi stand occupy the slip way that runs outside Sweet Mothers Kitchen and Kapai down to the Ancestral Bar and Kaffee Eis.
“It would remove 18 car parks, which would have some impact on parking for the local businesses and also adversely affect the vibrancy of the area,” Lester says. “It would also prevent the area from being turned into a park in the future.”
He says neither local businesses or the Taxi Federation were supportive of the idea. The Taxi Federation was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Other locals are also apprehensive at any moves to alter parking.
“Not being able to park nearby would just run the business down, says Dylan Ventin of Glengarry Wines. “People can’t carry big orders any disatnace so they’ll just go elsewhere.”
Sam Irvine of Kapai says the move would just shift double parking and illegal stopping taxi congestion from one side of the street to the other.
“Why fill a prime eating place with taxi stands?” he asks. “Taxis should park at the stand round the corner on Cambridge Terrace. The area in front of us would be far better filled with tables and chairs.”
Deer hunting artist and longtime hairdresser at Paddy’s Lotto, Lance Barnard, says the plan would kill a little island of retail between the city and Newtown, and there was already a taxi stand just around the corner.
Fellow hairdresser Mike Petrie says that taxis would be a great idea after 6pm “but definitely not during the day.”
However council officer Stephen Carruthers says it was never the council’s intention to remove car parks from the area during the day and the proposal was still under consideration by council.
“We suggested the idea as a possibility after 6pm,” Carruthers says. “But we’ve been told to go away and review plans for the whole of that area, and council will discuss it again.
Carruthers says that the idea is still a possibility “but maybe for later in the evening.










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