Dear Ann, In my humble option roads ARE for going from point A to point B and not for PARKING. There should be no parking on roads. As a resident of the borough you pay taxes for maintaining roads which are for moving traffic, NOT for your parking NEEDS. Driving and parking is a privilege not a right. 1. a financial assault on our restricted incomes - a car is not a right. If you own a car you have costs. If this cost (including parking) is a financial assault on your income then sell the car. If you need the car for work then that is the cost of doing business. If you need to commute to work in a car then perhaps you should find work closer to where you live  or move closer to work. If you still need a car then you should pay for the convenience of having one. 2. assault on ability to function freely inside of our borough - why not say assault to function freely in our city, country or for that matter the whole of EU? After all the freedoms we enjoy in our borough go well beyond of our borough borders. And you can function freely by walking, riding a bicycle and taking a public transport like MOST of us, that is. So, there is a problem with commuter/student daytime parking? How to resolve it? Simply create a market for parking spaces. What London does not  have is a real market value indicator for parking spaces therefore no one is interested in developing car park spaces, simply there is no money in it. On the street I live (which is inside a controlled zone) there is a row of eight garages and space for additional half a dozen cars but NONE of the garages are used to park cars in and the space in front of the garages that could be used to park cars is left unused. Why is that? (BTW, London could learn a lot from a city like Tokyo. There is no problem with parking in Tokyo. Why? Because before you can buy a car you have to PROVE that you have a parking space for the car. And where needed in city centre or shopping/commercial zones  there are enough parking facilities that meet the demand. Those facilities are paid for by the users not the taxpayers) "Cutting Ealing & Acton up into..." "prevent all of us moving around the borough freely, as should be our right." - again owning a car is not a right so moving freely in a car is not a right it is a privilege that you enjoy. Once ownership of a car becomes a problem then you as a car owner  should pay for that problem. Restricting parking zones do not prevent me from my privilege and a RIGHT to walk freely in the borough. "traffic wardens" - at least there is employment being generated by your car ownership. Would it be better if those traffic wardens be employed pushing paperwork from desk to desk? "fines" - if you think that fines are too high then you should petition to the council to lower the fines, unfortunately there are plenty of car owners who will pay a small fine and not think about it twice. The fines are high to discourage the plenty of higher earners who own cars. Unnecessary paperwork - If you think there is unnecessary paperwork then scrap the zones and let anyone park where they can find a space including commuters, after all many of them are most likely residents of the borough as well. Confusion of zone parking hours - are they not set in a way to discourage the commuters and therefore have to be different depending on the location? Read my previous post to fix that problem. difficulty in accessing local shops -  if it's too far to walk or take a short trip by public transport then the shops that you are accessing are certainly not local to you. excess of residents' cars for evening parking - when you are buying a car you should think where you going to park it. When you are buying a house/flat and you have a car then think about parking and pay market value for parking space. 1. Cancel zones. Fine with me but then just let car owners be served on first come first serve basis. 2. Introduce a borough-wide street restriction during... - so you are NOW going to employ an army of traffic wardens across all of the borough? Just think how many possibilities of "slight transgressions" this could generate   and you will be "hunted" across all of the borough. 3. Issue each household with a maximum of 2 permanent car permits... showing car registration - so if someone has a car then that person gets a permit makes perfect sense but why should those that don't have a car not be able to have a car permit? Because they don't need one? But if it's a right of a borough resident to have a parking permit then that right has to be extended not based on your "need" but based on your residence in the borough. EVERY resident of the borough should be able to apply for a car parking permit for the street they live on. 4. Issue all households with books of Visitor parking tickets, valid for one hour - now here it gets really interesting because not all residents will have the use for all of their visitor parking tickets. Recently, I actually received some visitor parking tickets from the council. I have no use for them so I was thinking that there must be people who could use them. Can I sell my Visitor parking tickets to anyone? I'm sure there must be some commuters willing to pay... 5. Allow permits for local workers... they must justify their need to a permit - Justify to who? A council official? I can just imagine how random the justification will be because everyone who "needs" a permit will have a justification for one. An in your example a working mother needing to collect children. So how this working mother will prove that she is working and further more how she will prove that she is working on the day she needs to pick up her kids. Delivery van needed... again everyone who wants to park for any reason will find a justification for doing so and it's going to be left up to a council official to make that decision on a case by case basis? Why your scheme is no better then the existing one? 1. It gives YOU a car owner a privilege to drive and park your car. 2. It is not simple at all because it involves a council to decide who will and will not have permits and for what reason. 3. It will not reduce mistakes and fines because there will now be a borough-wide parking restriction during the "commuter" hours. 4. It reduces a cost to YOU a car owner but does not reduce cost and is of no benefit to non car owners which most likely are a majority of the borough residents. 5. It will not reduce administration costs because fines will still be issued across the borough during "commuter" hours and permits for local workers will have to be administrated. 6. If it's a local shop then why don't you walk? Local shops would be better served by having well develop public transport bringing people from outside and well developed car parks where people can leave a car and take a short walk to a shop. 7. Who and how will determine what are necessary workers/traders? A council official based on what criteria? 8. Commuters can not park now in the existing parking zones where there was a problem so there is no change really. And students? You mean students could not justify a parking permit in your scheme but someone who works in the borough can? Additional thoughts 1. The reason for (existing) and new buildings not having underground car parks is because simply it's too expensive to do so? There is no financial return in building car parks. You need to create a financial incentive for developers to include car parks in new buildings. That can only be achieved by creating large zones of no parking on streets and no stopping for shopping. If you want to alleviate demand for road space then you need to open ALL roads for two way traffic where the with of the road permits and prohibit parking on any road including stopping for any length of time above couple of minutes. The opening of roads to traffic would need to be on all roads and that means on roads that are now closed due to "rat runs". 2. May I ask you how big is the house you live in? Because most houses would only have enough space for one parking space and therefore you would need to surface all of the green space in front of most houses. This is not a solution but a convenience to you as a car owner. 3. Spend more money changing things around without real results. 4. & 5. Ah... so there will be "special" cases as well... how many special cases will there be and who exactly will decide on where they will be? The residents or the council? Would this not bring us back to the existing zones problem? 6. Councils should not be in the business of providing "pay on exit" car parks. This should be left to private sector. A council should provide an incentive to private sector by severely limiting parking spaces on all the streets of the borough and creating real value in owning and running parking facilities. YOU as a car owner should pay for your parking space and this would include a tax on any parking space that is part of your property. Me on the other hand as I'm not a car owner I already pay for my ride on public transport and it's NOT cheap. You pay for your car park I pay for my bus...

Entire Thread

Topic	Date Posted	Posted By
cpz	23/08/09 19:37:00	Roz Crosby
Re:cpz	24/08/09 17:15:00	Penny Crocker
Re:Re:cpz	24/08/09 23:23:00	Graham Weeks
Re:Re:Re:cpz	25/08/09 10:29:00	Penny Crocker
Re:Re:Re:Re:cpz	26/08/09 10:51:00	Peter Chadburn
Re:cpz	26/08/09 12:41:00	Penny Crocker
Re:Re:cpz	26/08/09 17:43:00	Ann Pav
Re:Re:Re:cpz	26/08/09 22:19:00	Roz Crosby
Re:Re:Re:Re:cpz	28/08/09 10:58:00	Ann Pav
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:cpz	28/08/09 14:18:00	Peter Chadburn
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:cpz	28/08/09 21:41:00	Alan Brainsby
Re:Re:Re:cpz	30/08/09 06:33:00	Peter Kenneth
Re:Re:Re:Re:cpz	30/08/09 13:04:00	Alan Brainsby
Re:Re:Re:Re:cpz	01/09/09 15:38:00	Peter Chadburn
Re:cpz	27/08/09 22:46:00	Hugh jones
Re:Re:cpz	27/08/09 23:08:00	Alan Brainsby
Re: Boston Manor CPZ	10/09/09 15:02:00	David Millican
Re:Re: Boston Manor CPZ	10/09/09 15:32:00	Ann Pav

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