Majority agree ‘rules are rules’

More than 8000 people believe if parents break the rules they should be fined, even if it’s outside a school, an online Herald poll has revealed.

The unscientific survey was started after a father accused Auckland Transport of targeting parents as “cash cows” when he was fined $100 for parking for five minutes to pick up his son from school.

About 14,000 people voted with 60 per cent selecting “if you’re breaking the rules you should be penalised”.

A further 30 per cent chose “surely they’ve got something better to do” and the final 9 per cent said “forget cars — walking, buses and public transport’s the future”.

Nigel King, a real estate agent, was fined $60 for parking on a yellow line outside Ponsonby School in Curran St, and a further $40 after he turned around and parked over a driveway across the road.

He said he was in the car the whole time, with the engine running, until his 9-year-old son came out of school.

“They have two people there taking photos,” he said.

“I guess Auckland Transport have realised this is a bit of a cash cow — fine parents picking up their kids from school.”

An Auckland Transport spokesman confirmed that the agency had placed parking wardens outside Ponsonby School “two or three times a week” in recent weeks, and stationed 35 officers outside schools across the region each day.

But he said parents were “definitely not cash cows”.

“When you equate full operating costs for the officers, we lose time and money by providing this safetydriven service to schools.”

Ponsonby School principal Dr Anne Malcolm said parking had become a fraught issue in the inner-city suburb since resident-only parking zones were extended in the past month.

The new zone has forced city workers to park further out from the city — including in Curran St, a busy street used to access the Harbour Bridge.

“People are parking all over our local area and walking or busing into town, so it’s really hard for parents to get a park outside the school,” Malcolm said.

She said parents brought “probably 200 cars” to drop off and pick up their children each day, but there were only two designated drop-off carparks with a two-minute parking limit.

I don’t know if it’s something I could see myself doing in a big production sense but it was definitely fun. Wairangi Koopu