Fairfax Media this week counted about 250 car spots and loading zone spots that could be removed on account of the plans included in the government's City Centre Access Strategy, released last month. The strategy said there would be a path installed on a long stretch of the western side of Castlereagh Street, where parking and loading zones are used intensively through the day. ''There's a lot of tradies that work here,'' said Chan Vongsarath, an electrician on a contract at the nearby Downing Centre. ''It's not feasible to pay $50 an hour for off-street parking and carry our tools down from the top floor,'' he said. ''If they put a bike lane in here, they are just wasting their time.'' Further north on Castlereagh Street, Hussein Bazzi was delivering Lebanese cakes from a van driven by his boss. The delivery should be a one-person job, but the two do it together as a concession to the lack of parking. ''If you are by yourself you have to find the perfect spot, but if there's two one can just run out,'' said Mr Bazzi.

More bike lanes like the one on Kent Street? He didn't like the idea. The government did not specify how many car parking spots would go in the next few years. City of Sydney council said with the limited information it had, less than 20 per cent of existing loading in the CBD would be affected. As well as Castlereagh Street, the government's plans also include removing spots from the west side of Wentworth Avenue, in part to free up traffic displaced by a tram line it wants to put on George Street. There is also the northern section of Pitt Street, which again will have a bike lane on its western side, and other places to be removed on King Street, Kent Street, Liverpool Street, and on Hay Street and Campbell Street near Central. To accommodate the lost spots, the government says it will encourage the use of off-street parking. A recent trend in the city is the lack of demand for off-street parking spots in privately-owned or council car parks. The government's estimate is 7000 to 21,000 spare spots daily. In one sign of the weakness of the private parking market, a 93-space car park at 1 Dixon Street, Chinatown, sold this month for about $8 million, more than a million less than it sold for six years ago.

For the moment, the government and cyclists are on the same side. ''We all still want our coffees and shopping items but the current transport landscape by far too much prioritises the parking of cars,'' said David Borella, president of Bike Sydney. ''The road space is a public resource for the mobility of people not for the storage of private property, ie cars.'' The government, as well, says it is prioritising the masses who move through the city each day. ''Despite the large number of cars in the city centre, they only move about 15 per cent of people who come into the city centre during the morning peak,'' a spokeswoman for Transport for NSW said.