South Australia’s media is “driving a stake into the heart” of the city with its coverage of city parking policies, Adelaide’s Lord Mayor says.

Stephen Yarwood described the coverage of Adelaide City Council’s budget over the last week as a “complete and utter furphy”.

“You’re driving a stake into the heart of your home, people’s homes, people’s businesses, and the confidence of the state of South Australia,” Yarwood told InDaily.

On Tuesday The Advertiser ran a front-page article headlined Street Fight detailing a Council proposal to increase the parking fees for some on-street bays by up to 25 per cent, from $2 to $2.50 an hour.

A second proposal for a “premium” fee charged in peak times on certain on-street bays would increase the hourly rate by between 50 cents and $1, to a maximum of $4 per hour for the city’s busiest traffic bays.

The theory behind the increases is they would discourage people from circling through the city’s streets looking for an on-street car park and instead park in a multi-storey car park, reducing congestion on the city’s roads and making them safer and more walkable.

Yarwood said the fee increases were small, and The Advertiser’s story made no mention of the fact that according to a council study Adelaide’s parking prices were the lowest on average for any capital city in Australia.

“And on the basis of the facts nothing could be further from the truth, and it does so much damage,” Yarwood said.

“We’re actually talking about ridiculously small fees communicated in a way that actually turns people away from the city.

“I’m going to be maintaining a vigil to call on the media to be part of an informed discussion that is actually going to make the city a better place.”

The Advertiser’s story featured interviews with leading city businessman Theo Maras and Business SA chairman Nigel McBride, who both criticised the tax.

Yarwood said The Advertiser’s report suggested the council was making city parking unaffordable, and the newspaper’s treatment of the issue would damage the city’s small businesses.

“By promulgating what I would argue is an inaccurate portrayal of council’s policy, (it) actually affects the confidence of the city, and in turn the confidence of our state.

“But also it does damage to the small business owners who are trying to put food on their table.

“We were all genuinely disappointed. The real headline is we have the cheapest on-street car parking, the cheapest off-street car parking in the entire country.”

Melvin Mansell, the state editorial director of News South Australia, which publishes The Advertiser, hit back this morning.

“As always, The Advertiser report was accurate, fair and balanced,” Mansell said.

“The Advertiser constantly and strongly champions its state and its readers.

“What the Lord Mayor must recognise, if indeed these quotes are accurate, is the newspaper is here to serve its readers, not the administration.”

On Tuesday night a council committee considered the budget and knocked back the priority parking fee proposal, although it kept the other price rises.

Despite being highly critical of the coverage of the budget, Yarwood said the backlash in no way shaped the council’s decision to scrap the priority fee proposals.

“I wouldn’t say we didn’t support it because there were two recommendations. One we’ve supported and the other one we’ve said ‘let’s not rush into this’. We need that to be considered over the next six to 12 months in a rational way with more detailed investigations.

“We will always want to do this in partnership with the media and the community. Setting up this infrastructure under the radar was never going to be a good way of getting people to understand what we were trying to achieve.”

Much of Yarwood’s unhappiness about the media treatment of his parking strategy seems to stem from the fact that he feels he is on the right side of expert thinking and research about traffic.

“What I’m trying to do is develop a dialogue that moves from the academic and technical to helping people understand the realities of behaviour and people and how it influences cities,” Yarwood told InDaily.

“If one hour of on-street parking is literally half the price of off-street parking, there is absolutely no question that a car will drive around the block at least once looking for a park.

“That’s what my mother does. but if you then extrapolate that to the 10 or 20,000 vehicles or more that do the same thing every day you are actually starting to look at very big numbers of increased movement of vehicles through the city.”

Yarwood has a background in planning, and through the council’s Smart Move strategy has been trying to impose modern transit planning theory on Adelaide’s streets – a move which has been backed by several transit studies undertaken by council consultants.

Smart Move – which was driven largely by Yarwood, InDaily understands – is predicated on the theory that everyone in Adelaide, from consumers to businesses, will be better off if there are less cars on the city’s streets.

“A City with calmed traffic is safer and more enjoyable,” the Lord Mayor writes in the strategy’s foreword.

“A City where cycling is popular has healthier people. A City with more pedestrians has more interesting streets which benefit from passing trade.

“Adelaide is the most car-reliant City in Australia and has the greatest number of car parks of any capital city. By 2020, road congestion will cost Australia $20.4 billion in lost productivity per year.

“If we only plan for cars, all we will get is a City with cars. If more people used public transport, changed to bikes and carpooled, there would be less traffic on the roads and that makes your driving experience better. It’s a logical transition that cities throughout the world are consciously pursuing.”