Hannah fitz Harding is the mayor of the City of Frio, and improvements are being made to the way that parking is managed along the Layton and Porl Beaches. We actually spoke about this earlier in the year. Parking will remain free, but the City of Frio is introducing four our time limits and parking matters to car parks at two of the beaches. I would assume that this is to try and stop those people that had been essentially living down there staying overnight.
A lot of the tourists that are parking up their vans.
Maybe not all those though. It's very and they can't get in there half the time. Hannah, good morning, Good morning, guys.
How'd you come up with four hours?
Look, it's what we've found down at South Beach, and it has been quite good at dealing with a similar issue down there. Really, the challenge for us is that the beaches are incredibly popular port and lation activity starts at these beaches pretty early in the morning. You know, the polar theirs are there from you know, they would have been there for hours, So now they get there at some ungodly hour of the morning. And if the car parks are full of campers overnight. It makes through
a bit of a problem. So that sort of sort of, isn't it if you like beach goers. So four hours to us fields like long enough for people to just have a good day at the beach, but probably also you want to stay a bit so smart. I'm not sure that an eight out date at the beach is going to be particularly good for anyone. So we've found
it works pretty well. And Port and lath and particularly Vasion we have a different challenge as well, which is because it's nice and closer to a train station there, it's been used for the parking ride, which means that there's no parking during the day for people who just want to get down the beach.
Yeah, I reckon that's a real big issue for you.
Are you a sun sackey yourself, Hannah?
I do love the beach, so I divide my time between South Beach and between between Later and there are are two favorite beaches, right.
I can't imagine myself staying there for four years? Are four years? Four hours do actually extend you stay that long?
Look, my daughter did nippers down at Lays and so that's often quite a long day at the Beach. What we've done to make sure things like surf club patrols and the people who work in the various sort of places down there, whether that's Coast or Orange Box. We've introduced a permit system so if people are there for legitimately the whole day doing a shift or you know, maybe running a workshop down at the surf club, they'll be excluded from the four hour limit. Said that system.
Because Next actually picked that up already.
While I understand the need for limits, some concern that may impact on volunteer surf life savers like me who have to patrol between four and six hours at times, I also like to add that Fremantle's Beach car park as people camping there daily, still, says Nick. Well, this is what it's all aim to address, isn't it.
Hannah.
Yeah, that's correct. So you know, we don't want to be terribly punitive or anything, but you know, these car parks are just filling up, and you know, people leaving their car there and go to the city for the day and not not you know, that's not where they should be parking.
And do we have areas? Do you have areas in your council? This is the bigger question, Hannah, because I do see a lot of them up at the other end of town, and I do see them there as well.
Do we have areas.
Within the council and within our city that can accommodate these people though, But we do.
I mean, they're really covered by things like caravan parks, and we appreciate a lot of those are very full. We've got one down in the south of Freemantle. You would have seen those cute little nineteen eighties kind of bungalows that are sort of at the south end of Frio there. The challenge for us is if you're encouraging people to camp in an area, you really need to provide twenty four to seven facilities as some supervision to safety, and we don't have a lot of land for that
in Fremantle, so it is a challenge. You know. We appreciate with the housing classes there are a lot of people who you know, are sleeping in vehicles and we try not to be too punitive. But at the same time, we can't have our beach car parks completely excluded from beaches because of campus.
A lot of the National parks, you'd be aware, they do allow casual camping, but they have someone who goes in there is the caretaker for free camping, and they can stay there for say maybe two months, and they oversee the operation of that area and move people on if required, and if they do not help them, they can call the ranger. Is that a possibility you might look at Look.
I don't really think we've got the land available for that in Intre. You know, we're a pretty dense urban area and we've looked at this a fair bit because you know, obviously you want to be as inclusive as possible, but you know, an area that a belongs to us, we would be suitable to that and see has access to those toilet and shower facilities twenty four to seven just doesn't really exist for us. And you know, the beaches are not the placer. We think that's that's going to work out well Marry.
Fishing Boat Harboring Park there.
Yeah, Hannah good be interesting when all all this are coming to force.
It's been rolled out now. I don't think people a bit of time to get used to it before the summer, and we're just hoping it means to surf club and things that happen in the summer. It will just be a little bit easier for people to get down there, and tiny and parking.
All right, good on it. Thanks for your time this morning.
No problem.