New parking restrictions to curb ‘entitled’ drivers at Bertram Primary School

Parking restrictions will be introduced around Bertram Primary School in a bid to control “entitled” drivers.

The City of Kwinana council voted unanimously at its May 27 meeting to restrict parking along Price Parkway by installing ‘no stopping’ signs every 20 metres.

The new restrictions are intended to encourage drivers to park on Mangart Road, Moombaki Avenue, Champion Drive and Protector Way, which are within walking distance of the school.

In recent years, the city has received numerous complaints from the school community and residents about unauthorised parking on Price Parkway between Moombaki Avenue and Protector Way.

A report to the council said this created an “unacceptably” high level of risk to all road users.

It said the issue had been exacerbated by the school growing to 718 students, when it was originally designed for about 460.

“As the school also provides kindergarten and pre-primary education, a higher proportion of students require parental assistance for travel to and from the school, leading to increased reliance on private vehicle trips,” the report said.

“Despite ongoing enforcement, unauthorised parking continues to occur and is causing obstructions and elevated road safety risks.”

Cr Matthew Rowse said the restrictions were a “no-brainer” as parking at Bertram PS had been a “constant frustration” for residents and parents.

“Beforehand (people) may have been seeking out proper proper parking areas, whereas nowadays some people feel the entitlement of just parking anywhere,” he said.

A city officer told the meeting traffic issues were common around schools as a lot of vehicles arrived at the same time for pick-up.

“We end up with cars parking on verges, we end up with cars parking in places where you can’t pull out of your driveway or that it’s unsafe to pull out of intersections because they block sight lines,” he said.

He said the city did not like to enforce existing restrictions, such as not parking on verges, unless there was signage.

“One of the challenges we have with signage is to get the right number of signs to ensure that if you are infringed, you can’t feel like you had no opportunity to know you couldn’t do what you were doing,” the officer said.

“As you approach to look at where you might park, it’s very clear that that area is not right.”

Cr James Brown questioned the number of signs but the city officer said residents consulted by the city had supported it.

“It does look like a lot on the drawing, but I think you’ll find in real life it looks like a sensible amount,” the officer said.

“There’s usually a frustration because if you wanted to grow grass, you wanted to put retic in, it’s a challenge because you have a lot of cars parking on your verge, they break your sprinklers, so they’re (residents) usually very keen to have those problems resolved.”

The meeting was told notices rather than infringements would be given out first to give people time to adjust to the change.