In August, Asian Mart owner Tau Su accused the council of "trading us like a milky cow" over the number of fines his customers were getting for parking outside the store after 6pm, when a loading zone reverted to a taxi stand.
The customers, many of them from out of town, were getting pinged $40 for stopping briefly to drop off passengers or to get out of traffic to look for a legal park.
Su last year said the situation amounted to a parking "trap".
He says the taxi stand, called a ‘small PSV zone’ in council jargon, was removed just before Christmas, leaving just the 24-hour loading zone.
He hasn’t heard of a customer getting fined for parking there since.
It’s a "good result" because it will no longer cause unnecessary upset for much-needed domestic tourists, many of whom came back to the store to complain about the fines, he says.
Although he hasn’t heard why the stand was removed, he thinks his vocal complaining, including several emails to the council and one to the former local MP, made a difference.
The taxi stand was hardly used by cabbies anyway, he adds.
Council media man Jack Barlow tells Scene the taxi stand was removed on Christmas Eve "in response to a demand for additional loading zones in the town centre".
