In some parts of the country.
Or it persuades those who commute to find an alternative. Not everyone who commutes has to drive to a station and park there.
They could walk to the station. Take PT to the station (bus etc) Cycle to the station - parked bikes take up far less room than cars. Get the wife to drop them off at the station. Share a car with others going to the same station.
Cycling isn't going to be practical for all.
I'd be interested to know where you live. Where there are 150 residents trying to park in 100 spaces regularly. Most wouldn't put up with that and move. Or simply not choose to live in such an area in the first place, if they wish to own a car.
Or are you actually just saying you can't always park right outside your house?
But adds many £10s to your council tax bill when 99.9% of people need it collecting with their weekly rubbish collection. I suggest that you make a pile of unsolicited junk mails for, say, 6 months and see how much it weighs.
First you have to establish if there is a real problem or its just a few people who seriously believe that they own the bit of public road in front of their house and only they have the right to park there. Most commuters that use the train around where I live commute to London and they will be parking in the roads fairly early in the morning. At this time of the morning they will only be taking spaces not already used by local residents.
What seems to happen in some other areas of the town where parking permits have been introduced is that it comes with other road safety aspects such as restricting parking to one side of the street on narrow roads instead of both sides as what happens now. Friends of mine used to live on one such street where the side that parking was allowed changed on the 1st of each month and on those days traffic wardens would appear early in their shift to book anyone parked on the wrong side.
Scott posted
The local council won't be suggesting introducing a CPZ in that particular situation. How does it come about, by the way - do the houses not have any off-street parking at all, or are they mainly flats without dedicated parking spaces?
michael adams posted
Some might be, but I don't think all, not least because often it is the residents who campaign for a CPZ. Or are at least consulted on it and vote for it.
And the problem is solved. Not perfectly, but few problems ever are.
No, you wouldn't think that, because of the diminishing returns. Having a single time-window would deter, say, 80% of the commuters. A second time window, probably only an extra 5 or 10%. The third, hardly anybody.
But they've got permits, so they don't care. And if they don't pay for permits, they're freeloading on those who do; because if nobody bought permits then the CPZ couldn't be funded, and then the street would be parked up solid by commuters and nobody else would be able to park at all.
Which they will have done.
That's true. What you're paying for is the chance of a parking space during the day when you need one. Not for one in the evening.
No its isn't. All that happens is that the same process repeats itself at the next station further out from the centre.
Other time windows are to cater for the school run. And parking at weekends for things like football matches.
Howvever as I point out in my other post these windows are only ever of benefit to residents if their cars are normally absent at those times.
Residents are given no choice in this matter. It only takes one or two complaining about the school run or a football match and its automatically assumed that every resident "will" be similarly inconvenienced, so the extra windows are imposed and the extra charge levied in the permit.
Commuters are looking to park at between 7.a.m and 8.a.m. The only place commuters could find to park, would be where residents' cars were missing between 7.a.m and 8.a.m. So how many residents does that apply to ?
This "commuter myth" is the one pushed by Councils. The idea that councils wouldn't impose measures for no other real reason than to raise revenue might not be platable to some people, but it happens to be true. More especially when they're as strapped for cash as they are at present.
But if your car is parked up between 7.a.m and 8.a,m when commuters are looking for spaces, why would you have trouble driving off later and parking back in the same space ?
If as you say, the problem is with commuters ?
Or is the problem now cars being able to park in the CPZ outside of the windows without having to pay anything at all ?
michael adams
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On a road close to here, residents used to park half on the wide pavement. Every once in a while, the police or whoever would ticket them.
Since the council introduced (paid for) residents parking, the bays are marked out half on the pavement. In exactly the same place.
That only applies to people living within walking distance of a station. (In winter when its raining etc)
That only applies to people within walking distance of a bus stop (In winter when its raining etc)
(In winter when its raining. Cycling isn't just something that needs to be done on sunny says in the Summer)
Why not persuade the wife to get a job and drive her to the station instead ?
Like communes, all such arrangements usually last for about a week before the arguments start. .
Of course it isn't. All over London they're proposing cycle superhighways. These are obviously thought a great idea by the self-righteous "born agains" and "new cyclists" and the mamils. But won't be so great for the old dears and airy fairys who might otherwise be persuaded to get on their bikes and go out for a potter at 3 m.p.h.
Similarly nobody is going to imbue the sort of common sense necessary in a lot of "new cyclists" that its not a good idea to cycle alongside or inside heavy lorries, buses, or anything really at any time when there's a solid barrier to your left.
michael adams
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When they did that round here, they were careful to allocate each zone to incorporate areas with both difficult and easy parking. In such a way as to get a majority in favour of paying for parking. Easy to see if you look at the zones on a map. No other reason for their very odd shapes.
What happens is that a few people lobby for a permit area. The council send out a consultation/voting letter but don't necessarily state all the conditions or restrictions. It often takes a public meeting of some kind with someone asking the right questions to find the limitations. This meeting is the one that the people who originally lobbied for the permits realise that they may get something very different to what they imagined would happen!
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the only residents around here who campaigned for a CPZ were people with dropped kerbs. Which they claimed were getting blocked. These dropped kerbs were already marked with the appropriate painted lines, but the Council did nothing to enforce these. When the dropped kerbs were originally installed a fee will presumably have been paid, but many of these houses have changed hands in the meantime.
So all the people who campaigned for the CPZ will pay nothing unlike all the other mugs who are having to stump up.
Basically councils are looking for any excuse to impose CPZ's same as with any number of their other scams.
And please don't mention "consultations"
Basically councils just as with TFL pick and choose whose voices they want to pay heed to, in any consultation process. In the latter case they invite input from special interest groups over and above any input from local residents. Most such consultations are in fact foregone conclusions and are simply window dressing - all paid for by the very mugs they're designed to impress,
michael adams
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Its legal to park in a bay even if its on the pavement, it's illegal to park on the pavement unless its a bay. What's the problem?
Not what used to happen round here. Once a space is taken by a commuter it effectively stays taken for the rest of the working week, because residents get home before the commuters do. Residents park elsewhere and don't really want to go out later in the evening just to move their car nearer. A commuter gets the space the next morning and so it continues.
Doesn't happen much here any more (we are 200 metres from the station). That's because residents have now saturated the local parking and there are never any free spaces first thing in the morning, unless someone has an early start (typically before 0630).
The more annoying ones are people who go away for the week, but start their journey later in the day. They do take a local space, and occupy it for days.
I don't expect to park outside, but within a 3 minute walk would be nice.
They are. Tenement flats. Effectively no off-street parking. Said to be 'full' by about 9pm.
Also seen in many places (including round here) in the posh houses from late 19th century. Three or four storey town houses, not that wide, no rear access for garages. Space for one car outside perhaps, but they are now mostly HMOs.
We have eight flats per entry so it is easy to see how the numbers of vehicles add up.
Get your local rag to ask for car parking revenues and costs under freedom of information and see if they are making loads of cash from it.
They did that around here recently and discovered its costing the council £70k more to enforce than they collect in fines.
So it may be an employment fiddle but they aren't making a profit.
In my town there are many long streets of terraced housing, often with houses converted in to two flats. Two or three cars per house and no off street parking! It wasn't until about 25 years ago that the council considered refusing planning permission if a conversion from a house to flats or a new build didn't provide provision for off street parking. This had resulted in houses with adequate front gardens being converted to flats and the front gardens being concreted over.
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