News roundup week ending 5 April

Well, it’s official:  Nikki Barton of the Haslemere Action Group against the parking proposals (HAG)  is standing, as an "Independent" for election as our Surrey county councillor on May 2.  Below are the report on the front page of this week’s Herald and her letter on the letters page.

In my lexicon “Independent” implies no alliance to any political party or trend.  I very much hope that Mrs Barton, should she be elected, will learn that as an elected representative on a formal governance body of the United Kingdom, she has a duty to represent all her “constituents”, those who did not vote for her as well as those who did.  Those who live in streets which have fought for parking controls as well as  those residents who have fought against.  As an elected official, she might find that her responsibilities are more onerous than simply shouting the odds at meetings of the Local Area Committee for Waverley.  I wish her a good campaign, although not a successful one.


Update You can see Mrs Barton’s Manifesto Leaflet on the haslemereparking.com website here. I am with her on the subject of cyclist and pedestrian safety, and I would also support "affordable parking solutions" only I somehow doubt I have the same take on what that term means - low-wage shopworkers who can only get to work by car is one thing, cheap parking for your Range Rover when you travel from Haslemere station is quite another.  She says that her first priority, if elected will be to listen.  Well, if she is elected, we should all hold her to that - it will be a first!

Update number 2 see below shapshot of Surrey's list of nominations for the Haslemere division.

Surrey County Council apparently issued formal letters yesterday to all the residents in streets due to have residents’ parking permit schemes, giving some further information.  The scheme is anticipated to be implemented in May/June, and will be managed by Guildford Borough Council as Surrey’s parking management contractor.  If you are a resident of one of these roads, you probably know most of the details already.
Haslemere Vision, the organisation formerly known as Haslemere Neighbourhood Planning Forum, then Haslemere Vision, then Haslemere & Villages Vision, and now just Haslemere Vision because they thought mentioning the villages was cumbersome but they promise they won’t forget about them again as they did in the past, honestly, has announced on Twitter that they have posted their minutes to date on their website, where they can be found here. http://haslemerevision.org.uk/downloads/meeting-minutes/

The minutes are not, frankly, terribly enlightening, covering as they do primarily the plans for their launch on 27 April, the photo competition etc.  Certainly there is no sign of any minutes or other description of what went on at their September open day session last year at which some 100 or more residents participated, and apparently about 75 agreed to contribute to the development of a local plan.  As they now talk about some 25 people being involved one has to wonder what happened to the other 50?  Perhaps their thoughts or ideas were not convenient to the organisers, like wanting parking controls and charges for commuters?

Anyway, the full list of participants in the Organising Committee can be read at the head of the most recent set of minutes.  I’ll leave you to form your own conclusions about how well some of its membership can be expected to take resident’s views into consideration if they don’t happen to chime with their own.

One of the few real gems from any of these minutes was this:  "It was agreed that it was appropriate for H&VV to set up a task group that would seek to develop a proposal for a 20 mph limit in the Town but it was emphasised that this should take into account the legitimate concerns of different roads/ areas of Haslemere, seek expert advice and, as far as possible, be evidence based. Well, I hope we can take this at face value, as such consideration was not evident from HAG’s parking objectors at any time in their campaign.

Haslemereparkingdotcom appears to have lost something else from its website.  In addition to the “open, sensible and democratic forum” self-description, it has also lost its list of recent readers’ comments on posts.  Perhaps so as not to draw too much attention to the fact that they delete those which they don’t like?  Having seen that I am not the only dissident who has managed to register with the site and – occasionally – get comments published (there are two or three others who evidently dissimulated and sneaked in under the radar) I am also not the only one to have comments refused, or published only to be deleted again later because they offend the sensibilities of those shy retiring residents’-parking objector types.

The Economist Magazine has an article about car parking charges in town centres, here. http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21574519-defence-hated-parking-charge-car-wars?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/car_wars  In summary, it reports on recent research which challenges the notion that parking charges are bad for town centres.  It is the availability, rather than the cost, of parking which impacts on town centre economic health.  Indeed parking charges may be beneficial to traders as they promote frequent turnover of spaces.

Waverley Borough Council has implemented, as expected, the price increases in the High Street (Waitrose) car park from 1 April.  (Actually, probably 2 April, as 1 April was Easter Monday).  The old tariff was 70p first hour, 80p second hour £1 p/h after that.  New tariff is 80p first hour, 80p second, £1.20 third and £1 p/h after that.

All other charges for Haslemere car parks are unchanged, with Chestnut Avenue being 70p an hour and Tanner’s Lane 50p for  the first two hours.
 

When the increase was announced, there was quite a lot of fuss about it from HAG.  Even now, although their commentary is quite muted, they major on the Waitrose increase without mentioning the lack of increases at the others.  Retailers – and those in Haslemere are no different – tend to think that an increase in car parking charges is bad for business, and the belief that the local authority imposes charges simply as a form of tax is widespread, propagated by certain elements in the press.

There is now a considerable body of academic research evidence available on the dynamics of car parking – availability and price – in cities all over the world.  London, Bristol, San Francisco, Seattle, Vienna and Graz in Austria, Amsterdam and Copenhagen to name but a few. These research reports are referenced in documents such as the Transport Research Laboratory’s 2010 report on “Parking Measures and Policies Research Review”, and the London Councils’ 2012 report “The relevance of parking in the success of urban centres”.  As far as I can tell, there is no research available which directly addresses the dynamics of parking in small towns, and no doubt people will say that studies involving large cities have no relevance to them.  However, there is also no evidence that city-level studies are not relevant to small towns such as Haslemere.

Key conclusions which can be drawn from all of these studies include:

·         It is not the cost of parking which affects a town centre’s vitality, but its availability.  By availability, they do not mean the total number of parking spaces, but the number of vacant spaces available to be occupied at any point in time

·         If anything, it is the vitality of a town centre – the quality and variety of its retail offerings – which drives the cost of parking, and not vice versa.  It is evident that Guildford, for example, can get away with higher prices for parking than Haslemere or Godalming, because it attracts more shoppers

·         Up to a third of all traffic congestion in a city arises from motorists cruising on the lookout for free on-street parking spaces.  (This is one finding which probably doesn’t really apply in Haslemere, except within the car parks themselves)

·         Pricing has a role to play in optimising the utilisation of available  parking spaces, by encouraging churn to free up spaces for the next visitor.

On this final point, to put it crudely, two visitors each staying one hour will spend more in the shops than one visitor staying for two hours.  Four visitors staying two hours each, or eight staying one hour, will spend a multiple of what is spent by one parking all day – indeed an all-day parker almost certainly didn’t come with shopping in mind.  That is why WBC sets its charges – possibly their model is not perfect but their aim is to discourage visitors from remaining parked for longer than a couple of hours because after that time their economic benefit to the local retailers plateaus out.   They are aiming to encourage churn.  That is presumably why Tanners Lane is charged at only 50p for two hours, but then jumps seven-fold for longer stays.  While it is apparently true that WBC makes a surplus on parking – after covering the costs of acquisition, financing, repair/maintenance, management and enforcement in its car parks – it is not explicitly motivated by profit, as a form of taxation, and it is not permitted to use any surplus beyond a narrow range of transport-related purposes.

That might lead you to conclude that they should charge less, or even not charge at all, for shorter periods, and indeed HAG/the chamber of trade has taken up the call of Eric Pickles for local authorities to permit free parking for the first half-hour.  But they, and he, are wrong about this.  The logic now reverses:  two visitors each staying for 30 minutes will spend less in the local shops than one visitor staying for an hour.  In a half-hour, all you can do, as the language used by Pickles and others clearly indicates, is “pop in” – for example to buy a pint of milk or a newspaper.  You can’t do a “proper shop” in such a short space of time.  A fast and focussed shopper can perhaps do a proper shop in one hour, and others certainly in two, but a half-hour, after deducting time to lock up, walk to the shops, stand in line at the checkout, walk back, search for your keys, load the car, gives barely any time for actual shopping, indeed an hours parking probably gives three times as long for shopping as a half-hour.  On that basis, the Surrey CC response to protests about metering on-street parking, ie to permit the first half-hour free, was almost certainly not a good thing from the chamber of trade’s point of view, did they but know it.

Why increase charges at High Street/Waitrose, but not the others?  The issue was its popularity.  You only have to go there on a typical day to see people cruising looking for someone to vacate a space, circulating around contra-flow when the only permitted flow is East-West to the exit by Proven Motors, conflicting with other drivers going the right way.  I am not aware of any disputes there turning ugly, but it is only a matter of time. 

Meanwhile, Chestnut Avenue usually has some spaces available at any time, and on a Saturday, when the commuters are not there, Tanner’s Lane is almost empty despite its much lower charges.  WBC’s policy is therefore to encourage, through charging, motorists not to loiter around the High St car park, but to go to one of the others first.