|
By accessing/using The Crittenden Automotive Library/CarsAndRacingStuff.com, you signify your agreement with the Terms of Use on our Legal Information page. Our Privacy Policy is also available there. |
Will Britain Become A Parking Utopia?
|
|---|
|
|
Will Britain Become A Parking Utopia?
Geoff Maxted
DriveWrite
December 2, 2013
Diligent readers will recall DriveWrite’s article back in October about Swindon becoming the motoring centre of the universe thanks to its new enlightened parking policy. Now it seems that no less a body than the Lake District National Park Authority has taken note. The article has presumably put the wind up them for fear of losing all those wealthy tourists to the arcane mysteries and delights of Swindon Town Centre.
The Lake District has become complacent, clearly, by putting all their faith in a rabbit and a couple of lakes. Meanwhile Swindon has marched forward into a gloriously glowing future by giving the motorist a square deal. To try to claw back some of this lost tourist currency the Park Authority have been experimenting with two driver-friendly car parks where, essentially, you pay for what you use.
The charges are straightforward. As an experiment at two of their busiest car parks the user pays £2 for the first hour and then 35p for every twenty minutes thereafter. Now that’s fair and so much better than paying a huge chunk of cash up front without knowing the duration of stay. Drivers can pay at a machine on the way out or even settle up - this actually beggars belief - online within two days! No more worry about having sufficient change. How brilliant is that? Obviously if you take advantage and not pay at all then, thanks to number plate recognition cameras, they will look for you, they will find you and they will fine you.
In this day and age nobody minds stumping up reasonable car parking charges, especially when our money helps to support and maintain the beauty spot we have all gone to trample over. The scheme has been such a success - even the staff are friendly - that it is being rolled out to all forty car parks during this winter.
This new enlightened approach is catching on. Across our great nation our major institutions like the National trust, the Forestry Commission and even some hospitals, if you can believe it, are taking an interest and even setting up trials. A new spirit of fairness is gripping the country and we, the drivers, should be glad. Now it all it needs is for Chancellor Osborne to reduce the iniquitous amount of tax we pay on fuel and our lives will improve exponentially. Or is that a wish too far?
