Customers doing Father’s Day shopping were stuck in a mall’s car park for three hours – with some forced to abandon their vehicles and catch an Uber home
- Shoppers spent three hours in carpark chaos on Sunday as they tried to leave
- A social media video showed bumper to bumper shambles at the Brisbane mall
- Fed up drivers left their vehicles in parking lot, took an Uber home, returned later
- Critics have called for an overhaul of the entire area in the city’s north
Drivers at a major shopping centre had to wait three hours to leave a congested carpark, prompting some to Uber it home and come back later.
The Father’s Day shopping chaos at the Chermside mall in Brisbane’s north was posted in a video on social media this week.
It showed idling cars lined up in aisles waiting to exit, with some trying to back out of spots and almost crashing into other stalled vehicles.
Cars were seen banked up in parking lot aisles (pictured) in one of the most popular shopping centres in Brisbane
Some commenters asked why Brisbane shoppers take to the busy shopping centres on rainy days (pictured, cars trying to get out of the busy parking lot)
One father told the Courier Mail he tried to exit the Westfield carpark at 12.20pm but moved ‘just four spaces in two-and-a-half hours’.
His partner took their children to have lunch while he waited in the car but when she returned their vehicle had not moved.
They decided to park and take an Uber home.
‘Not the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon,’ he said.
Centre management told drivers through loudspeakers to leave their vehicles and go back into the shops.
Clare Miller had it easier after taking less than two hours to exit but warned shoppers to steer clear.
The 12-laned Gympie road outside the centre in Brisbane’s north (pictured) is a slow spot for commuters and one of the worst places that have traffic accidents
‘Avoid Westfield Chermside today unless you want to spend your Saturday in a carpark again,’ she wrote on social media.
Meanwhile, social media users took aim at Brisbane drivers in the online video that was captioned: ‘POV: Took you over three hours to leave the Chermside carpark.’
‘Happens every time it rains here in Brisbane. No one can think of anything else to do with their weekends so they go to the Westfields’, she said.
‘Why did everyone decide to be there today? My road rage almost emerged,’ another asked.
Others said Chermside was not the only mall to experience gridlock on Saturday, with busy carparks at centres across the city.
A driver at Westfield’s North Lakes mall said it got so bad she called the centre to ask them to open the boom gates – which it did.
The recent forced closure of the Toombul shopping centre, 5km from Chermside, after extensive flood damage is considered one of the reasons for the extra patronage at Chermside.
Toombul previously offered a retail space with 1,700 car spaces.
Locals have called for changes to a major road in Chermside outside the popular shopping hub.
The 12-laned Gympie Road is a slow spot for commuters and one of the worst places that have traffic accidents.
Ross Elliott from Suburban Futures, a community advocate group, wants major developments to roads, buses and rail in the area.
‘You now have congestion in Brisbane on weekends. It never used to happen,’ Mr Elliott told Brisbane Times.
‘All that has happened is that we have doubled our population in the last 15 years and we have just put more cars on the road.’
He said Gympie Road should become a short tunnel similar to the successful Nundah bypass in the same area.
Westfield was contacted by Daily Mail Australia for comment.
‘Avoid Westfield Chermside today unless you want to spend your Saturday in a carpark again,’ a social media user said (pictured, the Chermside shopping centre)
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