As of today, the new state has imposed a grace period for illegal parking. (photo by Sydney Morning Herald)
To ease the economic burden on drivers, the new state government announced that starting today, a 10-minute grace period will be granted to time-limited parking drivers, who will not be fined as long as they drive leave within 10 minutes of the end of the paid parking deadline.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, a 10-minute grace period is available to drivers who pay to park for an hour or more. This rule will not apply to non-ticket-selling private parking or meter parking, nor will it apply to illegal parking in public transport lanes, overtaking lanes, dedicated lanes and postal working areas.
The new state is the latest implementation of parking-related measures. In order to ensure the fairness of parking fines and lighten the burden on drivers, the new state government has proposed a series of related measures.
The new state finance director, Pirot (Dominic Perrottet), said it was a "human-friendly" approach taken by government to illegal parking that did not affect road safety. Since drivers had no intention of breaking the rules, he said, they should not be punished for a little delay.
Mr. Perot said the rule would also ease the pressure on parking inspectors to "have a chance to leniency with car owners when they issue tickets."
The new state, government, is backed by Labour. Park (Ryan Park), the shadow finance director of the new state, said the Labour government would "not abolish" the rule if Labour elected to power in March.
Kuli (Peter Khoury), an (NRMA) spokesman for the Australian National Road and drivers Association, also described the new state government's fine grace period as "reasonable", saying it would have a "significant" impact on all law-abiding drivers.
In addition, the new state government has cut 52 fines for illegal parking without affecting road safety by 25 percent. But only 18 local councils and five colleges and universities have responded to government's call to cut the amount of fines for illegal parking from A $112 to A $80 from March 1.
Kuli welcomed the move and called on more local councils and universities to follow the example of the state government.