Free parking appears on paper to be a major attraction for shoppers, businesses and sometimes even Local Councillors and politicians across many towns and cities. In reality, free parking is only a short term illusion as it has been proven time and time again it will be abused by motorist and ultimately requires charges and appropriate controls to make it work to the benefit of all users
For any High Street to be reasonably successful, it must provide a good variety of well presented, run and attractive shops, eateries and amenities the local community want to use and enjoy, and for all to be available in a safe and clean environment. It also needs to have in place a comprehensive travel plan suited to the needs of their visitors. This would normally include appropriate provisions for those travelling on foot, by public transport, cyclists and motor vehicle. Having visited many successful High Streets across the UK and Internationally, it is clear to me that appropriate parking policies are vital to maintain and develop a successful and flourishing location.
I have seen many different types of free parking schemes implemented with little thought or objectives that have created major problems. Such having relatively empty car parks while drivers are circulating or waiting for a free 30 minute space is available on street creating unnecessary congestion and pollution. I have also seen poor performing schemes were previously the average stay was consistently between 90 and 120 minutes changing to less that 60 minutes because the council introduced a free 1 hour period. I have seen places that as the parking schemes are no longer self financing, the Authorities either stop or reduce significantly the parking management and this leads to an even worst situation with major level of abuse by workers and all day parkers. Finally I have seen Authorities subcontracting the free parking off street to private operators who them use ANPR cameras to capture every driver that overstay the free period and resulting in many users bitterly having to pay substantial parking charges and as a result in many instances not going back to the location.
The parking policy to complement the success of successful places, needs to deliver in a number of areas like encouraging short term stays, introduce the most appropriate controls, Pay on Exit or Pay and Display and as a result promoting circulation of visitors. This is typically done by having the most appropriate and best value charges for the first 3 - 4 hours to encourage trade and higher charges for those wishing to stay longer.
The parking policy also needs to provide as necessary long term parking for local workers and commuters to park away from the shops and discourage workers parking all day in car parks close to the shops and amenities and taking the available spaces at the expense of shopping customers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3163067/Surprise-surprise-North-Wales-town-parking-meters-action-month-sees-shopping-boom.html#ixzz3g6DM8mCi
"Finally I have seen Authorities subcontracting the free parking off street to private operators who them use ANPR cameras to capture every driver that overstay the free period and resulting in many users bitterly having to pay substantial parking charges and as a result in many instances not going back to the location"
ReplyDeleteThe who the what now? The private operators manage the parking in a cheap, fair and effective way, but the customers don't like not being able to break the rules so they throw their toys out of the pram? I realise the article is about the (free parking) rules being bad in the first place (and that may well be correct) but the example speaks volumes about the attitude of drivers - "I got some free parking and it's not fair, boo hoo".
So I agree that effectively priced parking makes an external cost an internal cost, subject to market forces. Drivers need to realise that other people pay for their "free" parking.
The reason I am sure why many small shopkeepers agitate for free parking or reductions of parking charges in their town is because that is the impression that they get from customers walking in. It is not that they have read any surveys or studies about parking availability or charges - none that I am aware of reach any conclusion close to that parking should be free, cheaper or more available - but that a steady stream of car-borne customers come through the door moaning about either how much they had to pay for parking or how hard they had to search for somewhere to park. The two points of course go hand in hand - if they can't moan about free parking they will probably moan about the difficulty in finding a space, because free parking simply disturbs the supply/demand equation, and leads to "bay blocking" - people overstaying in parking because they can. The result of that is likely to be a reduction in the number of shoppers coming to their stores because if each parking bay is occupied, say, for two hours that limits them to accommodating about three shoppers a day, while parking for one hour permits six or seven. Most people come to shops with at least some notion of what they want to buy, and are unlikely to spend twice as much money if they have twice as much time to spend it in - probably the extra spending is pretty marginal. Indeed my own anecdotal evidence, watching my wife, is that setting a time limit tends to focus the mind and lead to more spending. That may of course just be her psychology, rather than a general thing.
ReplyDeleteWhen shoppers come into a shop and moan about parking charges, well, in the immortal words of Mandy Rice Davies, "they would, wouldn't they?" No-one particularly likes having to pay more, even if they know in their heads that this is a sensible and necessary consequence, and people tend to focus much more on minor outlays than they do on the really big spends - their brand new 4x4 probably cost them what they would spend on parking fees in about 300 years.
The fact that they moan about the cost does not mean that they are going to stop coming here, even if that is what they say. Larger centres can generally charge more for parking (and need to, to manage demand) simply because they have a more comprehensive retail offering. The chairman of the Wokingham chamber of commerce, for example, a few years ago responded to retailers' demands for free parking before Christmas by observing that nearby Reading charged considerably more than they did - free parking would be "a sticking plaster to repair a broken artery" because Wokingham's woes came from quite different sources. And in my home town of Haslemere, a FOI request of the local council produced data about parking charges in the three town centre car parks which showed that the most expensive one, directly next to the Waitrose supermarket, was 2.5 times as heavily used as the second most expensive, where hourly charges were half as much. In fact, the evidence suggested that the "Waitrose" car park really should have its charges increased to a wider differential because it is getting to the point that shoppers are cruising around it, going the wrong way around its one way system and causing mayhem for other shoppers, searching for a free space when they could easily find one a hundred yards away in the cheaper one.
Of course, you can't tell this to a communities minister in our current government. certainly it fell on deaf ears when they belonged to Eric "Rubber Knickers" Pickles, and it doesn't look much more promising with his successor.