The Dunedin City Council has plans to stop students from abusing the scarfie ride-share scheme, involving a takedown* of anyone caught breaking its rules.
The scheme allows those students attending either the University of Otago or Otago Polytechnic living in a certain zone of Dunedin to share a ride into North Dunedin with friends or flatmates and use priority parking as a bonus. The rideshare scheme has previously been free, but this year a $50 annual fee has been introduced to cover the cost of running the scheme. Each person, upon payment of the $50 at the DCC Customer Services agency, receives a token to use in the parking scheme. At least two tokens must be displayed inside the windscreen of the car to indicate that two people have commuted into university.
The DCC received reports in February this year that the rideshare scheme was subject to significant abuse, at which point councillors voted to restrict the scheme to students only and to apply the annual fee.
Recent surveys have indicated that 41% of people parking in the priority rideshare spaces only have one person in the car. Needless to say, this isn’t ridesharing as imaginary friends don’t count.
Fifth-year law student Brooke White is a big advocate of Rideshare, using it on a daily basis with her flatmates, but says she often sees people “Lone Ranger-ing” to university in their cars while still using priority parking spaces. White agrees wholeheartedly with the survey results indicating abuse of the system, saying “probably even more than 41% of users are abusers, if I’m being honest. I am so sick of people spoiling all the good things that the council tries to do for us students.”
From Tuesday, parking officers will be policing the scheme closely. The Rideshare website contains the explicit warning that anyone caught abusing the scheme will have their permit revoked and be banned from participating in the scheme.
The $50 annual fee paid by users of the scheme is to cover the costs of the extra policing, rather than having it run at ratepayers’ expense.
The Rideshare website indicates a desire to increase the number of parking spaces available to users of the scheme, but says that the council cannot extend the scheme with the current problems being experienced. Abuses of the system are to be addressed before any expansion of the scheme.
As Critic went to print, only 186 tokens had been sold so far to be used in the 153 available priority parking spaces. 1000 are available every academic year exclusively to students. To check your eligibility for Rideshare, go to http://www.dunedinrideshare.co.nz/
*Takedown sounds a lot more badass than the actual “crackdown” the DCC has planned, so we wrote it our way.
Riding in cars with students
