From today shoppers parking in the central city will pay $1 less per hour as rates are cut from $3 to $2.

The cut comes after council was pressured to drop the price with some central city businesses saying parking costs were driving away customers.

Tauranga City Council parking costs will be cut from $3 to $2 today.

The change was announced two weeks ago – two months after the new parking zone regime came into force.

From July 1 the city was divided into three zones - blue, green, yellow - with pricing at $3, $2 and $1 an hour in each zone.

From today the former central city blue zone, which spans from Grey and Willow Streets through Devonport Road and The Strand, will now be a green zone.

The two other parking zones remain unchanged. There will now be one extended $2 per hour green zone and a peripheral $1 per hour yellow zone.

Businesses have been telling the council the $3 zone is driving people out of the city, council transportation manager Martin Parkes told SunLive when the change was announced.

'We are told that it has impacted on businesses,” says Martin.

'The information has been coming back from the retailers and the Mainstreet board so we we've listened to them. We've welcomed the feedback, and this is a response to that feedback.

'We will be monitoring the situation very closely from here on in to see how it performs with the slightly reduced fee,” says Martin.

'We are generally happy with the new system. There's very positive feedback about the removal of time limits. Everybody seems to be happy they are in control of the time they can stay on the street, so that's a really positive thing.”

The idea of putting the fee up to $3 was to try and create a turnover in vehicles using premium parking in the central city, says Martin.

If demand for parking is too high and there are no parking spaces available, then council will look at raising prices again.