A dispute over a car park in Stanley has been reignited with the Southern District Council urging the Transport Department to make a decision on the project.
First proposed in 1994, the plan calls for a multi-storey car park to be built on the site of the Stanley bus terminus.
Initial plans had the car park being built above ground, with the bus terminus underneath. However it has been flipped, with the car park now going underground.
Stanley split over plan for multi-storey car park to handle weekend crush
District councillors supporting the construction want the government to make a final decision, hoping to bring an end to the two-decade impasse over the project.
But opponents want the Transport Department to take heed of more than 800 objections to the project submitted to the Town Planning Board last year.
Maxine Yao Jie-ning, a member of the Stanley Residents Concern Group, has been spearheading the campaign against the car park for nearly two decades.
Yao led a small protest of Stanley residents during a district council meeting on April 5, and petitioned the Transport Department to reject the project.
She queried the need for a large car park at the bus terminus, as statistics from the Transport Department showed that metered parking facilities were in short supply on Sundays but nearly half empty on weekdays.
Stanley residents are worried that their town will become too congested. Photo: iStockphoto
Yao acknowledged more parking spaces were needed in Stanley on Sundays, but she said a car park would be better located in a vacant lot behind Stanley Plaza, which is currently managed by the Link Reit and opened on Sundays for parking.
She said a car park in that area would move traffic away from the heart of Stanley, easing weekend congestion.
However, a Transport Department spokesman said the bus terminus location was appropriate as it would be close to the beach and the centre of Stanley.
Southern district councillor Paul Zimmerman acknowledged the heart of Stanley could get congested.
“There’s a lot of street-side parking throughout Stanley. They drop somebody off at the beach and then start circling, hoping that somewhere along the street somebody leaves and then they can park there,” he said.
“That is causing congestion and it’s annoying.”
But he warned that building a car park at the bus terminus could be counterproductive.
“The moment they have a multi-storey car park they will reduce street-side parking for cars and increase street-side parking for coaches.”
The prospect of idling coaches along Stanley Beach Road is not something area residents want to be subjected to, he said.
In a reply to a letter sent by Yao urging the Transport Department not to approve the car park, Transport Commissioner Allan Kwok Wai-Cheong said: “We will keep reviewing the case and discuss with various stakeholders on the need [for] the proposed car park and refinement of the design to address various concerns.”