What even happens when you report a car parked over a footpath?

It’s a nice day today, and you think maybe you’ll take public transport to work. It’s only a five minute walk to the station. A sense of achievement rushes over you as you put on some sunnies and roll out the door. But a couple hundred metres in, this walk turns into a gauntlet of road cones, temporary road signs and cars canted up on the footpath. At this rate, you’re missing the bus and you might as well just work from home.

New Zealand is up there in the top countries which own the most cars per capita. And to make matters worse, our public transport links aren’t well developed or affordable. It’s expensive to use paid parking, and new housing complexes are being built with not enough car parking. It’s not a problem we can fix by just building more carparks though; our car culture is systemically baked in.

The word for this is motonormativity. It describes a shared assumption that the way we travel is, and must be, primarily car-based. Researchers suggest that because of motonormativity, people don’t apply the same ethical and moral judgements as they would in other contexts, leading to illegal activity like speeding.

This kind of double standard might also explain why people feel like it’s OK to illegally park in mobility car parks without a permit, park over yellow lines, or park over footpaths (illegal btw).

Of course, with more cars and less parking, we can expect these issues to continue to be a risk for pedestrians who use mobility aids, handle guide dogs, or push prams.

Aucklander Sally Britnell has low vision and is hard of hearing and walks with a guide dog. For years, she’s come head-to-head with cars blocking the footpath. She says guide dogs are trained to stop, show you the obstruction and wait for you to figure out what to do. “You can ask them to find a way around it, they will often stop at the curb expecting you to go around on the road if there’s no other way.”

Many of Sally’s videos on social media have highlighted many of these instances. On one of her walks to the park, they come across seven illegally parked cars within a single block. Some of them are easier for her to get past because Sally is ambulatory, but for the trickier obstacles, she’s reaching her hand out to feel where the cars are.

Sally is a resourceful person and has reported cases to her council. However, she says she’s not had much success with reporting cases like these.

“By the time people can get out to see the cars, they are gone,” she says. Sally explains that more often than not, she finds illegally parked cars outside working hours when there are fewer parking officers, meaning the car can be gone before the officer gets there. And without the officer attending the site in person, there is no possibility of disciplinary action.

Evaluating the enforcers

Your local city council is the primary enforcement for these infringements, but your council may be more or less proactive than others about it. One of Sally’s non-Auckland followers said they got someone ticketed by sending through a photo of the illegal parking. However, this is not the case in Auckland; there is no photo-based reporting system and cases will only be investigated in real time.

I asked five city councils (Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Tauranga) what their process was for addressing complaints about illegally parked vehicles.

Auckland Council

Auckland Transport’s head of transport and parking compliance, Rick Bidgood, said they receive roughly 3800 requests for service each month and prioritise requests based on safety first. When an illegally parked vehicle is reported to AT over the phone, an officer is dispatched to investigate, and they will determine whether or not the vehicle is parked legally.

When asked whether or not Auckland Transport would consider app-based reporting to support accessibility, Bidgood said that at the end of the day the officer’s evidence is the primary evidence for the Courts.

“With technology today people are able to create anything with AI. We do also experience a high volume of ‘neighbourhood wars’ with heavy claims that do not eventuate when an officer attends.”

“The officer is also required to complete an evidence track for each offence. If the vehicle is not there on arrival, it is logged as such as we build a case history on the area. This may evolve into regular repeat logs to the location,” Bidgood adds.

Takeaways: More concerned about AI-generated blackmail for neighbourhood warfare than the accessibility of making reports

Hamilton City Council

Reports through the call centre are put through as a job request which are sent electronically to the parking officer. Hamilton City Council (HCC) also receives reports through an app called Antenno which works in real time.

A spokesperson for HCC says, “due to resourcing constraints, there is one officer responsible for responding to these requests across Hamilton. As a result, cases where a vehicle is causing a safety risk or major obstruction are given priority.”

Then when the officer attends the site, they assess the situation and “take the appropriate action.”

If the vehicle is no longer there, the officer will still attend the site and will close the request if it appears to be a one-off issue, or keep the request open for monitoring if there have been multiple reports for the same street and a repeat offender is suspected.

“If a request remains open for monitoring, a revised timeframe is set. The officer will attend the area at different times of day over a two‑week period.”

Since July 2025, HCC has received 60% of illegal parking reports through Antenno, and 30% through phone calls, and the rest through a mixture of other channels like emails, webforms and at the front desk of the council office.

Takeaways: Only one officer, but will diligently monitor the area of offence. High use of real time app-based reporting.

Wellington City Council

Wellington City Council (WCC) couldn’t provide a response on time. However, it has its own app called FIXiT which you can also access as a webform. “Blocking footpath” is listed as an offence and you can use your phone’s current location to map where the issue is, as well as upload photos. We don’t know whether the council will respond to the report in real time though.

Interestingly, in 2022, WCC revoked 2005 guidelines that allowed parking on a footpath where space was available. Now, parking on a footpath is an offence and carries a $70 infringement fee.

Since 2024, WCC has deployed a fleet of licence plate recognition (LPR) vehicles. First they were used to survey parking usage, and since last year, they’ve been used to enforce resident parking and metered parking.

On their website it says: “As parking becomes more in-demand, there is increased need for our parking officers to be in more places, more often, to provide enforcement. LPR vehicles will enable our parking officers to be in more places, more often, and will improve efficiency and consistency.”

Takeaways: Didn’t respond in time, but appear to be addressing the growing need for parking and enforcement

Christchurch City Council

The Christchurch City Council uses an app called Snap Send Solve. The same app is also used in other cities around the motu, but it doesn’t work in real time. A Council spokesperson added: “Snap Send Solve is not the appropriate method of reporting immediate road safety issues as it takes time to be processed through the system. It is designed more for reporting issues such as potholes, asset damage etc.”

Instead, you should call the council’s contact centre and they will provide details of the complaint directly to parking compliance and an officer is dispatched to investigate. “The officer must observe the offence and gather appropriate evidence to support an infringement being issued.” They suggested d/Deaf or those hard of hearing should use the NZ Relay service to make a phone call, or send a message through their social media channels.

Takeaways: Use the phone.

Tauranga City Council

Team leader of regulation monitoring at Tauranga City Council, Stuart Goodman, says if a complaint is made during working hours, then an officer is dispatched to investigate. Then if the vehicle is found to be illegally parked, they may request the owner to move the vehicle, issue an infringement and/or tow the vehicle. However. if the vehicle is no longer there, no further action is taken. Goodman says: “If it is a recurring issue, Council may look to use CCTV or targeted patrols to address the offending.”

Goodman says out of all of their parking complaints over the past 12 months, 1863 of them were received via phone and 360 of them were received via the Antenno app.

Takeaways: Low use of app-based reporting, but at least the app works in real time.

Practical solutions

So if you spot a car parked over the footpath and you want to report it, the fastest way to get a response is via phone call. You will need to provide the street name and property number, the colour and make of the vehicle and the registration plate number. Pedestrian advocacy group, Living Streets Aotearoa, has collated all the contact information for the 19 most populous cities and district councils in Aotearoa.

And look, you might just not have the time to call the council for an uncertain outcome. Living Streets also runs a campaign where they can mail you Yellow Feet leaflets to put on the windscreens of vehicles parked over footpaths. This way the owner of the vehicle is more likely to get the message and no one gets a hefty fine.

And in the long-run, you can lobby your city council to invest more resources into parking enforcement and awareness campaigning on the issue and how to report it. Sally believes that reporting should be able to be done through photos and that enforcement should still apply even if the vehicle is no longer there, using geotagging and timestamps to ensure safe footpath access for everyone.