Car parks could grow to accommodate bigger vehicles

The average size of vehicles on Aussie roads is getting bigger – much bigger – and car park sizes should grow to reflect this undeniable change.

That’s the assertion put forward by Standards Australia, the century-old government-recognised authority that sets out guidelines for everything from construction standards to sunscreen effectiveness.

The standard size for on-street and parking lot car spaces was last revised by Standards Australia in 2004, at 5.4 metres long and 2.4 or 2.6 metres wide.

At the time it provided ample room for Australia’s most popular cars to slot into with room to spare, but since then homegrown Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons have been replaced by bigger, heavier vehicles.

“The last revision to the standard happened 18 years ago. The experts that we work with to put that in place looked at the average car that we drove back in 2004,” explained Standards Australia’s comms boss Adam Stingemore.

“As our cars have changed, we also need to consider our car parks,” he said.

Standards Australia is proposing the extension of regular car space lengths by 20cm to 5.6 metres.

Today, the two top-selling vehicles in Australia are the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger dual-cab utes, which are considerably larger and heavier than quintessential Aussie large cars like the Commodore and Falcon.

When car parking regulations were last adjusted, a Holden Commodore measured around 4.9 metres, long but a modern Ford Ranger is almost 5.4 metres long today.

SUVs are getting bigger as well – and now account for more than half of all new passenger car sales in Australia – and it’s these vehicles that are driving the push for bigger car parking spaces.

If the proposal put forward by Standards Australia gets the nod, it will make it easier for utes – and an increasing number of US-made pick-up trucks like the Ford F-150 and RAM 1500 – to park in a regular car space, whether it’s on the street, in a shopping centre car park or by the beach.

However, not everyone agrees that bigger car parks are the answer.

Speaking to The Guardian, transport and cities director at the Grattan Institute, Marion Terrill, said the proposal “…normalises the behaviour of buying these enormous vehicles when instead the government should be nudging people in the opposite direction, especially as we are increasingly understanding the negative effects of larger vehicles.”

She said that some but not all parking spaces could be enlarged and that a wholesale change to car parks would encourage the uptake of larger vehicles that already benefit from several tax incentives including the instant asset write-off scheme, which has helped propel ute and SUV sales in Australia.

“There shouldn’t be an arms race to get even bigger vehicles,” said Terrill, arguing that larger vehicles were inherently more dangerous for other road users, especially cyclists and drivers of smaller cars.

Another quarrel with Standards Australia’s latest proposal is that many car park complexes are not structurally capable of taking the extra mass of big utes, SUVs and also EVs – sales of which are increasing at a tremendous rate.

“Our car parks aren’t structurally safe for our heavier cars,” David Mepham, an urban planner specialising in parking, told The Guardian.

He believes that governments and councils should build fewer car parks and encourage people to use active and public transport.

“Is it smart to accommodate… people… making what I consider to be silly decisions about cars and then demanding we change the urban environment to accommodate their decision? No. But you have to be pragmatic too,” he said.

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