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.

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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.

Respark - an unfair local tax?

As many of you will know Respark charges increased at the same time as the council imposed the Evening Parking charges and increased the amount of double yellow lines and parking meters in the city.

For those of you that don’t know, Respark is a scheme that was introduced to stop residential streets being full of parked cars that were not connected (owned, visiting etc) to residents. The costs that were charged to residents were to cover the cost of the scheme i.e. not to make profit.

So what happen this year - the council decided to double the cost of a resident permit. They also increased the cost of other permits including one day visitor permits. The outcome of this was that the Respark scheme now became another form of local taxation and it was no longer a non-profit making scheme to help the residents of the city.

Some critics have said that the ruling council (Liberal Democrat) have imposed a tax on areas of city that are controlled by opposing ward councilors. It is worth saying that most of the Respark schemes are in wards that are controlled by the Labour party.

From what I understand the scheme was only considered for an area if the residents of the street asked for the street to be put forward. I wonder what would happen if the residents petitioned to have their Respark status removed? Probably the council tax would have to increase again!!!

Oh on a final note - when the decision was made to review and change the evening car park charges, Respark charges were not changed.