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Dave Mansell's avatar

The new parking policies (really new charges) report is going to Scrutiny Committee on Monday (24 Feb) and then Executive on 3 March (not 26 Feb) and then it’s due to go to full council on 5 March as part of the budget. It’s important to note that the net income is included in the proposed budget and financial plan, so then becomes baked in, despite any consultation that follows, that at best can only look at small changes and will still need the saving to the council from the new charges. If agreed, these will cause big problems in Wiveliscombe and Milverton, where parking is currently free and used by many residents, who have no parking at their homes and no alternative, but to add to the many existing problems from parking on-street. Other areas may be similarly impacted by unintended consequences that are not covered in the council report. Some of us are and will be raising these.

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Stuart Bell's avatar

Hi Andrew. Mary Portas' conclusion that there should be free parking for town centres was deeply flawed, and something we see from retail representatives whenever parking is raised as an issue. Better surely to look at the hard evidence of the true cost of free parking to society, best shown by the work of Professor Donald Shoup. His work over many decades has shown that there is a high cost to free parking, and that actually market mechanisms are far more effective at ensuring parking is priced appropriately, matching supply and demand. Now, of course the council is NOT proposing to use that evidence, so every year we have the nonsensical approach of taking existing prices and adding a percentage, without any understanding of the demand at each car park by day and hour. So, we have car parks where demand clearly exceeds supply most of the time, such as The Crescent in Taunton, which means the parking there is underpriced. Meanwhile Tangier car park is underused most of the time, which tells you it is overpriced. The differential is so small that many drivers would ratehr sit and wait for a space at The Crescent than walk a bit further from Tangier. Shoup would advocate that you do the work to understand demand, then price accordingly, adjusting prices every six months, up or down, according to usage. The sweet spot is where pricing means drivers arriving will find at least one or two spots available on arrival with no queuing/waiting for spaces.

It shouldn't be a "political" decision at all to set parking prices. Use market mechanisms. Of course if you have some car parks which are then shown to be routinely underutilised, then it makes sense to use them for something else, such as housing.

Prof Shoup, recently deceased, was working in the USA where over provision of free parking is a much bigger problem than here. But the principles of applying market pricing apply everywhere, and in many countries his ideas are taking root. Drivers pay the market price for their car and fuel, tyres, servicing etc. Why should parking be different? Why should non-drivers subsidise the transport choices of drivers, especially as they undermine the viability of the alternatives?

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