Safe Speed Forums

Parking in Southampton is getting ever more expensive recently, and will continue to do so.

Southampton City Council multistoreys hiked their prices by around 30p per hour a few months ago, from 70p to £1. On-street parking can also be pricey, such as 80p for half an hour.

A planning application has now been submitted for parking meters in West Quay Retail Park. Just for your information, this is the last place in the city centre where free parking exists for the public during the daytime, and you can park in the retail park for up to two hours. To be honest, I'm surprised that they haven't installed meters before now, given how popular this car park is with visitors.

This is going to make life slightly more expensive for me. I don't tend to go into Southampton City Centre unless I need to. When I do visit, it tends to be a five or ten minute in-and-out job to the Post Office or a particular shop where I want to buy something. I have no intention of spending a while there, but soon I will have to fork out to park for a negligible time period. If only the first half hour parking were free, or if only the Post Office decentralised some of their services to smaller branches that are within walking distance.

At least parking becomes free in many places in the evening and overnight, which is something you can't say of some of the 24/7 on-street charges in Portsmouth, lol.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

i parked on the docks if i couldnt get a space outside comet or halfords. just say you are an agency driver and park at rank hovis car park at the weekend. the saturday guys are in the warehouse and the sunday guys are in the mill. no one will question you

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Richie

SSAFA supporter
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126025031585

I was amazed at the thread title. I thought this was impossible.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

So where is the nearest alternative?

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Andrew.

They did! The shops suffered, they took them out again.

The nearest alternative is the toys are us car park that is cheap or mfi/carpetright opposite the station

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

I just watched a recording of that TV program "Driving me crazy" with Jenny Bond.

It was little surprise that Southampton came up in the programme, although not for their silly speed limits, excessive numbers of traffic lights with inefficient operation, bus lanes used by only a couple of buses a day (one was found not to be on any bus route!), or highest proportion of speed and red light cameras in the county, but for parking.

A man was denied a residents parking permit for a whole year, because the council said he had a garage. The garage was no longer a garage, but a bathroom, and so the man didn't have the off street parking the council was adamant he did. The man received £25k worth of fines, but they were dropped after the parking tickets were found in many parts to be illegal, although the council said it was because the baliffs were unable to seize the man's car, because he cleverly sold it before the baliffs came round.

Sadly, I have to suffer living in the vicinity of one of the more car unfriendly councils. Except I don't. Where possible, I cut Southampton out of my life, such as shopping. I live on the edge of Southampton, and on many occasions it has been quicker for me to drive into Portsmouth city centre to do my shopping, which is over 20 miles away, than into Southampton city centre, which is about four miles away. Something's wrong there, especially as Portsmouth is more densely populated, and an island with only three access roads from the mainland. I am also very lucky to live close to a large out of town shopping area. Thank god they built it when they did, because current government policy wants these sort of out of town warehouses built in city centres, a bit like Southampton City Centre. And when Ikea gets built in Southampton city centre I'm sure everybody will carry their flat pack furniture on the bus or on their bike.

Cuckoo...

i went one better, i moved


i lived in bitterne road west near the bp garage. parking was a nightmare. legal or not, they came round issueing tickets even late at night (outside restricted hours)

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Richie

SSAFA supporter
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=126025031585

Yes, me too. I avoid going there. Southampton has one of the slowest average traffic speeds in the U.K. This is due to a combination of all the factors listed in this thread and I can only assume it is deliberate Council policy.

There have been a lot of unfavourable comparisons made with Portsmouth and now they seem to think that what So'ton needs is a "wow" factor to get back on level terms. What the city needs is a more practical, less lunatic Council which wants to promote commerce and not just the nightclub culture (another reson why I don't go!).

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I did an interesting thing in Southampton the other day. I was trying to turn right into Leisure World, but I turned right a junction too early.

As I approached the junction the lights for straight ahead turned red. The lights for right were still green so I thought I'd give it a go and see if that was the correct junction. It wasn't, so I did a U turn around the keep left sign and stopped a the lights ready to turn right back across the dual carriageway. To my surpprise the lights turned green within seconds, so I ended up on the road where I started, past the straight ahead traffic lights sooner than if I had stopped and waited - they were still red!

Now that was a one-off, but you have to wonder...

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Andrew.

Its not a 'one-off' at all Ziltro. The light sequencing throughout Southampton appears to be set to be frustrating and annoying. Try driving the length of Winchester Road. 6 sets of lights in about 1/2 mile and even when it is quiet there is no way you can drive the length of it without stopping. At rush '3' hour the lights are so bad it pretty much causes gridlock and becomes a Weapon of Mass Frustration!

I live just outside Southampton and thankfully I rarely have to drive in or through the city, the M27 gets me where I want or need to go!

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The police ARE the law, not ABOVE it!!!

From what people keep saying, Southampton sounds like an incredibly frustrating place to drive, but the phenomenon that Ziltro describes is not restricted to there. Here in Reading, if you are going west along Queen's Road and wish to turn right at the arrow, it is almost always quicker to go straight ahead, do a U-turn and turn left instead. This is despite the fact that Queen's Road is only one-way before the arrow, and the road going north is also one-way (i.e. the junction is only of "two-roads-into-one" complexity).

Of course, any council road planner worth his salt will not only cause as much congestion as possible, but make it illegal or impossible to circumvent it (e.g. by putting up "no U-turn" signs). To that end, I doubt there are many examples of the phenomenon in London. You can see that the planners there spend a huge amount of time perfecting their anti-car measures. There's no escape...except not going to London in the first place.

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

in the dark hours, it took 5 minutes to get to work (rank hovis) and half an hour to get home during the day. i used to cut through any back streets i could but there is no way to avoid the bottlenecks on the bridges

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Richie

SSAFA supporter
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