theboxers wrote:
Two shopping areas close to me have recently had paid parking restrictions put in place on formerly free parking. IIRC it is £2 an hour. However the first 30 minutes is free with a ticket.
This is a good way, IMO, to recycle bays and maintain the foot fall that these local business require. If I had to pay to visit either of these areas I would probably just go to the local business park, where parking is free, thus probably leading to the death of these shopping areas.
In my town, we're seeing complaints on cars entering the pedestrian area after 1600hrs. One of the reasons given is that drivers are ignoring the one way system . I've had to go in there as I cannot walk to the shops and the signs are barely visible. Add to that , there's a lack of enforcement as we don't have/can't afford a PC with powers to enforce the system . We've had the "we'll enforce parking at a stroke" ( as in Delboy ) speech from our council, but daily there's one road junction where the two lanes are down to one ,within 10yds of a light controlled junction, with vans parked on double yelows . Before Decrim, I only saw one instance of Beryll the peril doing anything on this. She seemed to lurk across the road, chasing non bluebadged folks into the local council car park . And our good town hall blokes wonder WHY shops are moving out of town , to business parks with free parking, leaving the town centres to become the haunt of charity shops/ cash convertors and nail bars .