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Parking will cover Perth in concrete

Concrete jungle: Fremantle mayor Brad Pettitt. Picture: Danella Bevis/The West Australian

Perth's obsession with the car will require parking bays the equivalent of twice paving the entire suburbs of Mosman Park, Peppermint Grove, Claremont, Cottesloe, Ned-lands, Subiaco, West Perth and Perth over the next 25 years.

Fremantle mayor Brad Pettitt has used "simple maths" to paint a likely scenario for Perth if the city continues with the highest level of car ownership in Australia - about 650 cars for every 1000 people.

Using population projections and the assumption that each car needs three parking spaces - one at home, one at work and one other - Dr Pettitt has calculated that Perth will need to build 3.9 million new parking bays by 2040.

This represents a total "paved" area of about 100sqkm.

"Not only would this required parking result in a rather unpleasant, sprawled city but it would come at an extraordinary cost," Dr Pettitt said. "Parking is not cheap to create. The average new parking space in Perth has land and construction costs of around $30,000 per bay.

"When you multiply $30,000 per bay by the estimated 3.9 million extra car bays that Perth will require over the next 25 years, it comes to an astonishing $117 billion.

"This means over $4 billion every year for the next 25-30 years - just on parking.

"It would be cheaper to build two MAX light rail lines every year."

Dr Pettitt said it was "ridiculously expensive and economically in-efficient" for Perth to continue with a business-as-usual approach.

He said infrastructure choices made over the next few years would determine if Perth remained one of the most livable cities in the world.

Focus needed to shift away from the car and towards high-quality public transport, linked with mixed-use residential developments.

"Rail transit can carry 10 to 20 times more people than a single lane of traffic," Dr Pettitt said. "And by building densely around stations, people need 50 per cent less cars, often not needing one at all."

Dr Pettitt, in conjunction with Curtin University's Sustainability Policy Institute, has produced a three-minute video to illustrate his projections and concerns for Perth.

Curtin's sustainability expert Peter Newman said that despite Dr Pettitt's dire predictions, his assumptions about extra cars and needed parking bays were actually very conservative.

And, with parking currently provided by both the private and public sectors, there is no reason why the same arrangement could not be reached with public transport.

"Working out how we do this is the biggest issue facing our city right now," he said.