This is posted at thisissouthdevon.co.uk today......
I've just staggered back from a meeting of Torbay Council Transport Committee meeting which had been opened to the public. The gathering was at the English Riviera Centre and there was a certain irony about having to pay £3 at a meter to speak at a parking control meeting!
Torbay Council is constantly banging on about town centre regeneration, numerous empty shops and of course the infamous BID scheme where local traders pay a supplementary tax for town centre improvement. So what are they doing to support that? Well more parking meters with draconian charges of course which will simply drive people away from the towns!
Of course it isn't just the meters it is also about the hurtful charging policy. For a while now I have been promoting a call for FIRST HOUR FREE parking where meters have already been erected. The call has been made that it is only 20p for the first ten minutes. Well if you can get from the parking meter with your 20p ticket back to your car, then lock it before sprinting to your destination, grabbing what you want and then legging it back to the car inside ten minutes then you stand a good chance of being selected for the Olympic sprint team!
If Torbay really want to make extra cash from parking then a few parking meters dotted around the Willows might be worth thinking about. But to carry on with a parking policy that hammers town centre parking is eventually kill off the place.
My specific beef is with the proposal to pepper Roundham Road around the harbour with parking meters. I've watched Torbay Council make a pigs ear of Paignton Harbour by turning a once popular holiday destination into a myriad of prohibition notices, pointless fencing with all the attraction of the exercise yard at Guantanamo Bay and enough coloured road markings to equal a major motorway traffic intersection. Parking meters will finally finish the place off.
These knee jerk reactions to strategy really really worry me and they should worry you too.
Torbay Council is constantly banging on about town centre regeneration, numerous empty shops and of course the infamous BID scheme where local traders pay a supplementary tax for town centre improvement. So what are they doing to support that? Well more parking meters with draconian charges of course which will simply drive people away from the towns!
Of course it isn't just the meters it is also about the hurtful charging policy. For a while now I have been promoting a call for FIRST HOUR FREE parking where meters have already been erected. The call has been made that it is only 20p for the first ten minutes. Well if you can get from the parking meter with your 20p ticket back to your car, then lock it before sprinting to your destination, grabbing what you want and then legging it back to the car inside ten minutes then you stand a good chance of being selected for the Olympic sprint team!
If Torbay really want to make extra cash from parking then a few parking meters dotted around the Willows might be worth thinking about. But to carry on with a parking policy that hammers town centre parking is eventually kill off the place.
My specific beef is with the proposal to pepper Roundham Road around the harbour with parking meters. I've watched Torbay Council make a pigs ear of Paignton Harbour by turning a once popular holiday destination into a myriad of prohibition notices, pointless fencing with all the attraction of the exercise yard at Guantanamo Bay and enough coloured road markings to equal a major motorway traffic intersection. Parking meters will finally finish the place off.
These knee jerk reactions to strategy really really worry me and they should worry you too.
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