Auckland Transport's (AT) Andrew McGill is defending its proposal to ditch kerbside parking on the city's busy roads.
On Monday, AT released its draft parking strategy - proposing 1200km of Auckland's main roads lose their car parks in favour of transport infrastructure, footpaths, mobility spaces and bike and bus lanes over the next 10 years.
McGill, AT's head of integrated network planning, told Newshub Live at 8pm on Tuesday "change is necessary".
"I think once people understand and we explain more some of the detail behind the proposals and the rationale for doing it, there'll be more accepting of what's being done - but I also understand that it's going to take time," he said.
"We're not planning to just take out car parking but over the next decade, whenever we have a project coming along a key road… we want to be able to look at the parking lane and say, 'Do we really need that or is it better serving the people of Auckland to turn that into a bus lane?'"
McGill acknowledged it could lead to thousands of parking spaces being scrapped.
"I think in terms of the quantum of actual car parking spaces; we have about 600,000 car parking spaces on the streets of Auckland and we're talking about 86 percent of them not being subject to these changes," he said.
Based on those numbers, 84,000 car parks would be removed from the streets of Auckland.
McGill said AT was targeting "very specific" areas across the Auckland region.
While another proposal was to charge between $2 and $4 for park and ride, it was an unpopular suggestion among Aucklanders.
McGill said paid park and ride has previously worked in Auckland.
"We also have to recognise that park and ride's sole purpose is to provide access to train and bus and ferry stations for people who have no other option, and too many people are using them who have other options available," he said.
