GO NOOSA TRANSPORT INITIATIVES 2023/24 EVALUATION AND 2024/25 IMPLEMENTATION · Attachment 1 - Go Noosa - Car Park Tech Trial 202324 Evaluation

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING REPORT                                                     AUGUST 2024
GO NOOSA Transport Initiatives 23/24 Evaluation and 24/25 Implementation




Image 3 - VMS boards and car park locations

Key
Blue - Markers Outer VMS boards
Red - Markers inner VMS boards
Yellow – Six car park locations

Results

The trial was in place over 38 days during the 2023/24 Christmas holidays from the 9 December to
21 January 2024. There were 35 reported instances of downtime, over the entire period, due to solar
recharging issues requiring data resets, count resetting issues and the opening of Lions Paid
Parking. Each instance of downtime generally only affected one camera at a time.

Over the trial period, 189,013 vehicles entered the public car parks on the days where there was no
technology downtime.

Locations had common entry time profiles, most filling by early morning and receding later in the
day. Peak periods are between 9am and 3pm. As expected, the Main Beach (next to the Surf Club),
Maze (Cnr Noosa Pde and Noosa Drive) and Lions Park exceeded occupancy almost constantly,
with the Woods/Noosa Spit and National Park reaching maximum occupancy during most days.

When the maximum occupancy is exceeded, unnecessary vehicle visits contribute to overall
congestion. A key objective of the trial was to minimise this issue by maintaining occupancy below
90% at all times, ensuring 10% availability and allowing reasonable accessibility.

Each location had significant vehicles entering car parks while full, showing that even with the
signage, on most days about 30%-50% more people looked to park, than there was parking
available. Cars continuously entered the car park in search of the elusive car space even though
the parks are at capacity. Indicating a solution such as boom gates may be beneficial to restricting
access once full, to keep vehicles moving. A manual trial of this has occurred over the last two

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