Evening Parking Charges - is it a con?

Well this has been a very emotive issue around the city that has been raging for the best part of the year.

After months of businesses, residents and visitors complaining that the increased costs were driving away customers, driving clubs and societies out of the city and in general putting people off visiting in the evening the council decided to back down and re-structure the charges. Was the initial shock when the charges first introduced a ploy so that when they were reduced the public would be grateful?

To me there are several problems with this. The first and in my view the most major is that there are still evening parking charges and more places where people can not park their car.

If there is an argument that there are too many cars in the centre of the city during an evening then I agree that we should encourage people to use the excellent Park & Ride facilities, however what use are they when they stop before the evening attractions of York have. The theatres, film showings, restaurants and bars of York do not get going until 7.30 to 8.30, so by the time most people have had their fill the buses are empty - stood at their depot.

As well as the carp park charges and the inadequent public transport double-yellow lines and on-street parking meters were introduced. Now I always thought that double yellows were put in place to stop people parking and blocking access for people or more especially the emergency services. Obviously this was not the case and they were being used to police parking measures. The other amazing thing was that double yellow lines that had been in pace for years suddenly got removed and replaced with a parking meter.

I hope that this situation gets sorted out and that the city doesn’t suffer too much long-term damage, but this is a prime example of ill thought out policy effecting the lives of residents, businesses and visitors and a detrimental way.

—————————————————————————————

In tonight’s Evening Press Ann Reid, Liberal Democrat executive member for planning and transport, there is a report of her attacking the Press’ Stop the Highway Robbery campaign saying that it was “devoid of any intellectual content whatsoever”. It only got around 11,000 signatures!!!! Guess who has thrown the Teddy out of the cot?

Why can politicians sometimes hold up their hands and say sorry we got it wrong. I’m sure people would have a little bit more respect for them.