Does Victoria's parking solution lie in the sea? - Eddie Westergreen thinks so

• Eddie Westergreen

Desperate times call for desperate, and often innovative, measures.

Few aspects of a city or town define it more that the flow of traffic and pedestrians, and consequently the parking spaces available.

At peak hours, driving around Victoria is just not pleasant and in normal hours, parking is a headache.

In this critical area of national life, it seems that forward planning has not kicked in, and little thought is going into making our capital future-proof in this critical area.

Enter Eddie Westergreen, the owner of the popular car wash 'Pro Wash,' (and co-incidentally producer of the probably the best Watercress on the market), with an audacious and bold plan to take parking to the ocean and have shuttles into Victoria.

Given that the number of cars in the country has surpassed 40,000, Westergreen posed a rhetorical question about the government's plans to address this growing challenge, noting a general lack of inactivity in the his area.

An effort to create multi-storey parking at Maison Collet between Caravelle House and Unity House has done little to solve the issue in  his view and his own attempts to draw some response from the government has been to no avail as he claims he was bounced from one minister to another.

The ship solution

Westergreen's solution is innovative and out of the box to say the least. He is proposing acquiring retired container shipping vessels, known as RoRo vessels, which travel from China to America and can carry approximately 6000 boats. After their operational life, these vessels are usually sold as scrap metal in India or Bangladesh.

He believes that these vessels can be repurposed as parking facilities, strategically placed at specific locations. He considers this an ideal parking system, envisioning the possibility of bringing more of these vessels to our country and allowing public access.

These RoRo vessels come equipped with accommodations, and the government can include commercial activities like food courts and shops on board. Additionally, companies, ministries, and stakeholders can reserve parking spaces, and battery electric vehicles can serve as convenient pick-up and drop-off options for the public as well as shuttle people from the ship to Victoria, thus also addressing congestion in the town.

This proposed solution would not only address the parking and traffic issues but also promises to benefit the economy and be environmentally sustainable.

The cost of this solution would depend on its scale. Furthermore, Westergreen discussed a parking ticket system that could utilize drivers' licenses for access, aiming to reduce the need for traditional parking tickets.