AS paid parking in the Ellenbrook town centre only came into operation on February 24 commuters and shoppers are still getting used to it.

City of Swan Mayor Tanya Richardson said parking demand had increased in the Ellenbrook town centre with the opening of the new train station and to manage this, the City of Swan had proactively introduced time-limited, paid and business permit parking to help create fairness and equity for businesses and customers.

“The city has closely monitored the rollout from consultation to implementation, making minor refinements in response to feedback such as adjusting the location of ticket machines for easier access, increasing signage for payment options, updating FAQs on the city’s website, implementing EasyPark and making small concrete adjustments for ticket machine bases,’’ she said.

“There are eight public ACROD bays available in the town centre parking, as well as additional private ACROD bays not administered by the city.”

Echo News visited the Ellenbrook town centre on Wednesday morning to get some idea of the changes.

Apart from some empty 15-minute and electric vehicle bays the new Ellenbrook station parking seemed to be pretty full.

There were a few motorists getting some tips from more experienced users about operating the new payment/ticket machines.

On its website the city said there wasn’t the land available to build more parking and if it didn’t introduce better parking management, parking would be uncontrolled and used by commuters – making the bays unavailable for business and customer parking.

“The Public Transit Authority has developed a 500-bay car park as part of the delivery of Ellenbrook train station,’’ the city’s website said.

“But the city anticipates an overflow of commuters to park in the free on and off-street parking in the town centre.

“This plan will ensure that the most convenient parking is available for the highest priority users.’’

One shopper agreed with this saying it was great to be able to go to Dome and other shops whereas prior to the introduction of paid parking in the town centre they had found it impossible to find a parking spot while others said better planning for parking should have been undertaken.