Selfsufficientish.com

We live in a rural area so walking to town isn't an option!!

Hi

We here in Inishowen on the NW coast of Ireland have just had parking meters put into our town. (We had our first traffic lights last year!) We are a town of about 6000 abnd traffic is pretty tight through the town with double parking and tourists in the summer. We have development outside the town in the shape of new shopping areas with free car parking(for the moment) The charges are from the minute you park your vehicle, there isn't a free time. The cost is 50 cent for an hour with a maximum of two hours(to keep the workers from blocking the car parking spaces in town all day whilst they are at work. These workers now block the free supermarket car park



My questions are this.

Do you live in an area with these parking restrictions? Has it eased the traffic problem or do cars still block the roads and does introducing these charges lead to people leaving the town centre and shop elsowhere in the out of town stores?

I would be interestd to see as I don't think this is a good idea at all. It is a stealth tax for the council to charge an easy target to build up revenue to buy more car parking space to charge more. The worst about it is there is an outside company responsible for policing the parking and they are on a fantasic bonus scheme! (their words on the website!)

cheers

Ian

http://inishindie.blogspot.com/

Basildon's not that bad for parking costs really, it's a fairly large town with quite a lot of carparks and sundays are free...



and sorry mate, i can walk to town.


Mind you, the parking we get down our road from people not wanting to pay fairly reasonable parking costs is horrendous. mainly people who work in town i think by the amount of time the cars spend outside.

It's about gbp 1.40 an hour here in Swindon. It's over gbp 8 to park all day. I wouldn't mind too much if the buses didn't make life so difficult. You have to use the right change on the bus which means scrabbling around for gbp 2.70 every day or not getting to work.

Zoe

This is probably a situation where park and ride would work well. If you have to pay a lot to park in town but nothing to park in the shopping areas out of town, it is bound to have an effect on the town centre shops.

It is OK if public transport is good and cheap, but I suspect it isn't or people would leave their cars at home!

A park and ride scheme subsidised by the council to make it really attractive to commuters, shoppers and tourists would ease the congestion, but the council would need to keep the parking charges high in town or people would still be tempted to take their cars in.

Here it is fairly easy to park in town although it can get expensive. If I am going in just for an hour or so (generally the case as I hate shopping), it is cheaper to take the car and park than get the bus (especially if I have kids in tow). But because I try to be green, I do get the bus in quite frequently. It is difficult to do this if you are in a rural area, though, as we all know that buses are often not frequent enough to be of much use.

Thanks for the great answers!
You have some very good points.

We don't have much public transport here (a couple of buses a day run through) so I can't see a shuttle bus working.


The problem we are faced with here is that all of the private roads on the outskirts of the town have double yellow lines or parking meters. The council have the town sealed up. The residents have to pay a large amount of money annually to park outside their own houses and thier friends who visit have to pay too on an hourly basis. We are anly a very small town and you could walk from one side to the other in five minutes.

Here is an idea of the town centre.

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p26/ ... crana1.jpg

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p26/ ... crana2.jpg

We have one free car park in the supermakret but they are getting a barrier next month. You will pay on entry and this will be deducted from your bill.

These new measures don't help the traffic congestion as the same number of people still have to drive through.

I like the idea of 2 hours free parking to let most shoppers do their stuff, this wouldn't generate enough income for the council though.

Car sharing for the workers of the town would be an idea.


cheers