Parking mad policies only harm the Capital

Published on Friday 18 January 2008 08:23

Council just wants to grab as much cash as it can, says Bruce Young

DOES Edinburgh's parking policy go beyond grabbing as much cash as possible as quickly as possible? The question is not facetious. Councillors elected to provide facilities and officials employed to organise and manage them consistently fail to meet Edinburgh's parking needs.

The council's recent study on parking availability suggests that councillors don't distinguish between high demand in George Street and low demand in Regent Road and Johnston Terrace.

Yet they included these off-centre streets to improve apparent parking availability.

Four kinds of driver try to park in the centre of Edinburgh – tourists, commuters, shoppers and those who are stopping briefly. Only the latter needs on-street parking for a quick visit – the others would be better served by off-street car parking with payment on departure, removing the risk of a fine.

The council recognises this, otherwise why periodically dust off and promote old plans for underground car parks?

An automated car park is now planned under Chambers Street – but why only 100 spaces and why there when it could be built under the city streets – for which the council's own study shows high demand?

Or, as happens in Europe, why not build downward under squares and public gardens to provide central and unobtrusive high volume parking which would neither encroach on to building space nor reduce amenity?

In 2005-6, George Street produced 1.3 million in parking fine income, the UK's highest outside London, but while the council upped its charges, the result of that was to dramatically reduce occupancy. To recover income, the council doubled the period permitted for those willing to pay these charges, to find that occupancy increased.

But revenue fell worryingly – less frequent turnover of spaces meant fewer fines for overstays. The extended time let commuters park closer to their destinations.

Yet the council was quick enough to recognise financial potential in the extension of controlled parking zones out into suburbia, where few commuters and fewer shoppers park, forgetting that increasing use of residential areas as informal park and rides simply demonstrates the inadequacy of city centre parking.

The council seems to see car parking only in terms of both huge revenue and its very active strategy of social engineering – encouraging people out of their cars and making people who have cars travel by bus or, soon, tram.

I believe the city council's aim is to drive drivers off the road and out of the city, so small wonder then that employers now find staff unwilling to move to the Capital.

The council is not incompetent – it's just irresponsibly indulging itself – but sadly, the result of that is that Edinburgh is the loser.

&#149 Bruce Young is the Lothian & Borders Co-ordinator for the Association of British Drivers.