Your thoughts

[Tony]

Some thing, i think we all guessed happened anyway

[andsome]

I saw it on TV last night. This is the problem with out sourcing such a service, and then letting the company with the contract set targets.

[catgate]

I saw some of the programme and after a short while turned it off in disgust. It confirmed my feeling about the whole "parking problem" and bureaucracy's attitude to the motorist.

Our nearest city is York and from there comes a constant, mournful wailing from the city fathers about problems caused by the motorist. They are enormously proud of the steps they have taken to reduce motorists coming into the town, and are all the time dreaming up new anti motorist measures (including legions of Traffic Wardens and multicoloured speed bumps springing up like measles as far as the eye can see). They have several Park and Ride facilities spread out round the ring road , but few car parks in/near the city itself. Those that do exist necessitate one taking out a second mortgage before using one. Recently a car park, that had been an old gaswork site, was shut down, and is to be used for another super store or something.

The Chamber of Trade ( we all p... in the same pot) has complained vociferously about the problems of insufficient parking space, and the cost of using the existing space, and how this is affecting their "Takings".

However this does not stop those same city fathers from employing large numbers of people, including specialist consultants, to persuade as many more people as possible to visit York as tourists/shoppers/etc. and contribute to an already ridiculous situation, whilst at the same time making parking as difficult/costly as possible for everyone. They openly talk of spending the money from the rapidly increasing parking fees on more "traffic control". What a lunatic situation.

"Please come to our City and enjoy our taking money from you. Money that we will spend making it more difficult for you, and causing you less enjoyment of our City. We are doing our best to get as many people here as possible, so that you may constantly be in a crowd of site seers"What the city fathers seem to have lost sight of is that they were elected to look after the interests and well being of the local population, not the chain store share holders. The majority of the population are not interested in having masses of tourists jamming the streets, and would prefer to have more parking spaces so that they could nip down into town to do some shopping. (In fact many of them go to out of town superstores rather than go into town.) At the same time the shop and business owners see it as no part of their responsibility to help to provide parking for their customers. They seem to expect their customers to pay to park, in order that they themselves should make a comfortable living out of their businesses, and do not see the cost of customer well being as an legitimate expense.

I am sure that all this does not apply to York alone, but it is a sad reflexion on the twisted way officialdom operates in todays forward looking dynamic society.

Personally I keep out of the way.

[andsome]

The city of Lichfield is another tourist place poorly served by parking facilities. There is more and more housing going up outside the city, but no extra provision is made for these people to actually come into the city. There are several more acres set aside for yet more housing. The only sensible way forward is to use a few of those acres for a park and ride scheme, but the council can make much more money out of making the land available for housing, for yet more people who have no means of getting into the place.