With $150,000 in funding from Transport for NSW’s Places to Love initiative, AlburyCity is collaborating with the community to explore innovative ways to enhance local amenity, safety, and liveability around active transport networks and public transport hubs.
This trial has been shaped by extensive community consultation carried out in May and June. This process included targeted discussions with businesses and community groups, an online survey, and on-site pop-up events. The findings from these consultations were presented to Council guiding the development of the project.
Background
AlburyCity is participating in Transport for NSW's (TfNSW) Places to Love program. Under the program, Council received $150,000 in funding to trial the activation of a public space within 15 minutes' walk of a public transport hub.
As part of the initiative, AlburyCity has transformed the Griffith Road Car Park in Lavington into a public space for the community to use.
The project has been developed in collaboration with the Lavington community and aligns with our Retail Action Plan, Action 1.12 - Undertake a trial conversion of the Griffith Road Car Park into a green space with pop-up retailers in order to support walkability in Lavington outside of Lavington Square.
During the trial period spanning six months during spring and summer, we are gathering community feedback to understand what the community would like to see in the space in the future. All installations are designed to be removable and vehicle access along Hardware Lane will not be impacted.
Accessibility remains an AlburyCity priority, with existing disabled parking spaces being relocated to the northern section of the Griffith Road Car Park.
Click here for more informantion on Places to Love
Additional Information
The 906, 907, 908 and 909 bus routes all use the two Griffith Road bus stops. This area acts as a de-facto central bus interchange, as these routes provide coverage across the LGA. Since the 16 Regional Cities Bus Services Improvements Program began in January 2023, the 906 route (Albury to Lavington via North Albury) has been identified as the most popular route, with an increase of approximately 25% patronage. The program also highlighted that the newly introduced 908 and 909 services to Thurgoona via Lavington Central, the airport and hospital saw approximately 4,000 trips made between February and May 2023 inclusively.
The CBD Parking Strategy identified that the Lavington CBD has 1,446 publicly available parking spaces, with an average parking demand of 50%. The Griffith Road car park makes up 4% of the available parking in the Lavington CBD, with 58 standard spaces and 2 accessible spaces. The average parking demand in this car park is 58%, which means there is an average of 26 parking spaces available.
The Lavington Square Shopping Centre, directly opposite the project site, provides 1,005 parking spaces, or 70% of all publicly available parking in the Lavington CBD. The average parking demand across Lavington Square is 45%, meaning an average of 550 parking spaces are available.
The trial will remove 32 parking spaces within the Griffith Road car park for activated public space. This is likely to result in high demand for the remaining 29 parking spaces but will have negligible impact on parking availability at Lavington Square.
