Katoomba Charrette Outcomes Report - Blue Mountains City Council

Katoomba Charrette Report & Town Centre Strategy
on Echo Point and ensure that more visitors would come through the Town Centre and
patronise it.
Even a light rail system between Katoomba and Echo Point was mooted, although the Charrette
Katoomba – Echo Point Shuttle Study (1998) that was conducted prior to the Charrette
identified that the cost of installing a short length of light rail service was prohibitively
expensive (about $25 million), compared to other equally viable alternatives such as improved
bus service.
More Car Parking Capacity to Support the Echo Point Link with the Town Centre
There was no argument that a stronger Town Centre link with Echo Point was needed to attract
tourists also to the Town Centre. The questions, however, were how much parking was needed
in the Town Centre to make this link work, and how could such additional parking be paid for.
The Echo Point Shuttle Study (1998), prepared prior to the , recommended that upwards of 600
dedicated parking spaces would be needed in the Town Centre in order for an Echo Point
shuttle system to function successfully. A multi-deck car park in the Town Centre for this
many cars would have cost about $9 million!
ESD’s traffic engineer, Jim Higgs, re-calculated the Town Centre parking demand for a shuttle
link to Echo Point, considering existing Town Centre parking capacity, and considering the fact
that the peak demand times for Echo Point did not directly coincide with peak demands for
existing parking capacity. Instead of the demand now for 600 spaces, suggested in the earlier
study, Jim Higgs calculated that the highest single peak demand on Australia Day in the year
2025 might require a bit over 300 additional spaces.
How Parking Demands for Echo Point in the Town Centre were Calculated
The following explains the rationale behind the revised parking demand calculation. On
Australia Day, 1994, the peak demand was at 1:00pm, with 278 cars parked in 346 available
spaces at Echo Point. The Echo Point Plan of Management seeks to reduce parking at Echo
Point by 64 spaces to 286 bays. Projected demand in the year 2010 at 90% of the maximum
peak is projected to be 550 bays. Such demand would produce a ‘shortfall’ of parking capacity
of 264 bays, potentially to be provided in Katoomba’s Town Centre. The current parking
supply in the Town Centre of Katoomba is about 1100 bays, of which only the purely retail
component is fully active during this peak period. The remaining parking capacity would be
available to accommodate the Echo Point peak.
Furthermore, future developments in the Town Centre will provide additional parking which
would add to week-end and other related ‘off-peak’ availability of spaces, which could be used
by Echo Point patrons. Existing on-street parking in the Town Centre is generally
underutilised. The Charrette plans include parking for commercial activities, commuters and
gallery users, all of which have Echo Point patrons as a major part of their target market. This
further reduces the need for additional dedicated car parking capacity for the Echo
Point/Katoomba link.
Joint User to Help Fund Additional Parking Capacity for Shuttle Service
Also, it was agreed that a public transport linkage for the roughly 20 peak visitor days of any
year, would not be justified financially in a parking structure dedicated exclusively to shuttle
usage. Therefore, the Charrette Team agreed that a ‘joint-user’ for this additional parking of
as many as 300 spaces needed to be found, which would use and therefore help pay for the
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