The Winterthur city council rejects an initiative that calls for an additional parking garage near the old town.
The initiators of the individual initiative would like an additional parking garage in downtown Winterthur.
Supplement the municipal structure plan with a parking garage with 200 spaces behind the town hall – this was the demand of the individual initiative “Cars under the ground – a parking garage behind the town hall”, which the City Council referred to the Winterthur city council in November 2019.
The answer is now available: The city council rejects an additional parking garage near the old town for environmental, traffic planning and economic reasons.
As the city writes in a press release, a survey from 2014/15 showed that there was enough parking space in the city center. The results from that time showed that some of the existing street and multi-storey car parks were permanently unoccupied and that there was therefore no need for further parking offers in the city center. Although these surveys were a few years ago, they are confirmed by current observations by the city police, according to the city.
Also environmental and financial reasons
But it was not just the lack of demand and incomplete utilization of the existing parking facilities that led to the initiative being rejected. A new multi-storey car park also fundamentally contradicts the city’s efforts to tend to reduce motorized individual traffic, explains the city council.
In addition to environmental policy and traffic planning, there are also financial reasons that prompted the city council to apply to the city council to reject the initiative. It is unlikely that the annual parking fee loss of several hundred thousand francs, which is caused by the abolition of the surrounding above-ground parking spaces, which is explicitly required in the individual initiative and the lower occupancy of the municipal parking garages, is at least largely caused by a private parking garage operator along with the building lease interest could be compensated.
