Let’s imagine there’s been a revolution.
Leeds hasn’t waited for central government to hand down devolution, we’ve grabbed it. And we’ve decided to run the city by a mayor, elected for just one day, by a process called sortition, which is simply drawing lots. The first mayor happens to be me (basically lottery is the only chance I stand of gaining political power, so humour me.) My reign starts at midnight. The mayor is allowed only one executive decision. I choose…
Parking to the People!
Our bays and aisles will be wrested from the dread grip of the council – those profiteering scoundrels! Let’s tear down the tolls, uproot the meters and make our streets free for all!
Obviously this warrants a city wide celebration. Fireworks crack, bands play, champagne corks pop and there’s much merriment and mayhem in the streets. Let freedom ring!
I get featured a whole half hour on local TV news. Drivetime radio is an endless stream of happy motorists tooting their joy. The local newspaper declares me a visionary. I even get photographed on the Town Hall steps shaking hands with Gary Verity… ok, I’m getting carried away now.
At the stroke of midnight I strike the shackles of vehicular bureaucracy and declare the city a charge free zone: do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the parking law. Then I go to bed basking in a warm glow of civic accomplishment.
I wake at 6 and open the curtains anticipating a vista of a city at ease with itself, enjoying the natural right of coming and going and staying wherever and whenever one pleases.
There are a heck of a lot more cars I notice.
And they seem to be going even slower than usual.
Teething troubles, I say to myself. Some adjustment to our newly won liberty is only to be expected. It shall pass.
I put the radio on. It’s not quite as positive as last night. There’s a nurse from the LGI saying she can’t even get near her usual place and is already an hour late and still prowling the streets for somewhere to park. She’s over in Holbeck, she sobs. Whitehall Lane is choked all the way to Domestic Street.
I switch on the telly. They are interviewing a bus driver. His voice is a bit wavery and the camera can’t seem to stay still… then I realise the bus is being rocked by an angry mob of MCard holders trying to overturn it to block the A58 to oncoming traffic.
I wasn’t expecting that. Can’t trust the mainstream media though, I tut! Best go look for myself.
It’s 8am and city centre is jammed solid. I’m stood at the Art Gallery end of Park Row and the traffic is at a standstill whichever way I look. I explore some of the nearby streets. Every parking space is nose to tail with cars. Many were left here last night by the look of it. There are still some spaces available in the private car parks but most people seem to choose to trawl around interminably in the hope of snatching a free space than shell out a fiver on a ticket.
By 9am I hear that taxis have given up trying to get around the city centre. The Black and Whites are backed up for half a mile out of the station.
At 10 FirstBus announce they are taking me to court on some specious grounds or other – I haven’t seen a bus for hours, not a single one. I should be suing them!
At 11am I am informed that a lucrative black market has arisen in on-street parking. It seems some unscrupulous types drove all their unnecessary vehicles into town last night and hoarded every available parking space. Traffic touts are roaming the streets offering harassed and weary motorists over-inflated prices to make way for their vehicles. Extortionate! Some people are very anti-social, aren’t they, but we mustn’t let that stop us from doing what’s right for the average citizen, and that’s free parking for everyone; it only stands to reason. We have to make a stand against those who seek to profit from another’s misery.
At midday a thick pall of grey-blue exhaust fumes roils over City Square.
By lunchtime the local press are hounding me. The headline is “Carmageddon”, and they are accusing me of bringing civilisation as we know it to its knees. 80% of their readers think I should be thrown off the top of Woodhouse Lane car park.
Local blogs are taunting me for offering jams yesterday, jams tomorrow, and bigger jams today.
A bit later I get a call from Gary Verity’s office … I am no longer welcome in Yorkshire.
Before 3pm I’ve packed a bag, walked to the train station and bought a one way ticket to Manchester, only stopping on the way to dump my mayoral chain in a waste bin in Bond Court.
The end of a beautiful vision…
Of course this is all nonsense. Though not much sillier than the articles on car parking that appeared in the Yorkshire Post last week. I’m all for making the council accountable – it would be good if we knew what precisely the car parking charges were spent on – but to pretend that charges are “daylight robbery” and the council are “coining it in” just perpetuates the myth that car parking is an infinite, free, natural resource, something that we are simply entitled to. It isn’t, and we aren’t.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a proper debate instead?
I was fed up till I read that. Cheers. 80% of readers!!!
You’re right. It would be good if we knew what precisely the car parking charges were spent on, especially as the council committed itself to publishing the info over two years ago. Don’t think they ever got round to it.
Funny you should ask that, Phil, I intend to start a proper debate with a full length podcast. Want to contribute?
As I don’t drive or own a car, I’m probably disqualified from voting on this but thought I put in my two penn’orth anyroad. I read yesterday that the cost of petrol is set to fall by 6%. To offset this and discourage public transport waverers from reverting to their cars I would increase parking charges by 6% and use the windfall (every last penny audited by a committee of culture vultures) to build a palace or temple of carparking (twice as majestic as the splendid Woodhouse Lane facility) on that wretched no man’s wasteland that stretches towards infinity outside the Tetley. Architects and visionaries would come from the world over to fall on their knees and wonder at the expansive capacity of human inspiration displayed by this vehicular depository (designed by Zaha Hadid and Anish Kapoor). Drivers would pay premium rates just for the privilege of parking therein (it would be marketed as “vibrant parking for the 21st century” and there would be a moving pavement therefrom to deposit consumers effortlessly in the belly of the Victoria Quarter, Phase 1)
Great piece. It’s refreshing to return to first principles and restate the purpose and importance of parking restrictions. Like taxation, parking restrictions are the price we pay for civilisation.
To live together in a city, we have to limit each other’s freedom. Charging for parking spaces might not be ideal but it is an effective tools we have for rationing and regulating the use of cars in the city. That revenue should be spent in such a way that benefits all citizens (not just motorists) and it should be accounted for transparently. The council does itself no favours in concealing information on but it should be commended for continuing to advocate a steeply graded pricing policy for parking to deter long stay in the city centre.
My own view is that the city council is still too generous to motorists in allowing to provision of more parking structures (Victoria Gate, Quarry Hill) even if these are ostensibly for short stay. Leeds needs better public transport, sure, but it will be trapped in a cycle of car dependency so long as it continues to provide parking in the central area and its fringes. We can’t just wait until public transport improves to stop building more parking spaces, we have to tackle the problem at both ends simultaneously.
I don’t own a car or drive but that shouldn’t disqualify me from having an opinion or contributing to the decision making process on this issue. I’m a citizen of Leeds. I travel around the city. I share space with cars on the road. I live with the way physical consequences of accommodating the car in the city (fast roads, vast intersections, parking structures, etc) So, I’m just as entitled as any motorist to speak and vote on this issue.
Of course you are, David. I was being semi-flippant, quoting myself from another topic where I’d suggested tongue-in-cheek that I wasn’t entitled to a vote on the vision for the city centre in Leeds as I didn’t live in the city (but nonetheless proceeded to provide one). If one followed my argument to its logical conclusion, one would disenfranchise oneself almost totally which would be absurd.
Although I no longer bother with public transport in Leeds, the reason is not its adequacy or otherwise. Indeed on the route that I would use it, the frequency of buses even at rush hour is perfectly satisfactory. What makes it unusable is the behaviour of passengers. I got tired of waiting day after day at the bus stop outside Kitson College as half-full bus after half-full bus whizzed by without stopping. The reason being the number of passsengers who get on these buses and refuse to move down to the back or go upstairs but instead block up the wheel-chair and pram space and corridor at the front of the bus making it look to the driver as though the bus is full when in fact there is space for everyone waiting at the bus stop. The final straw was when a number 56 pulled up and let off a passenger and the driver said he could only let one passenger on; I explained to him that there was plenty of room (and indeed seats) empty at the back and also requested – in vain – that folk moved down the bus but the driver eventually shrugged and closed the doors leaving myself and a dozen or so others on the pavement when there was room to accommodate us all. This behaviour (repeated daily ad nauseam) is the reason I’ve stopped using public transport and walk instead (good for my health but I suspect it will have driven some people back to their cars and carparks). Sometimes we need to look inside ourselves and at our own selfish behaviour rather than expect solutions from “them” (councils or whatever).
You forgot to Nationalise the private car parks.
Actually, would the flux caused by Nationalising car parks and making them free bring forward demand for better and cheaper public transport?
Walter, I commend you for choosing walking. As you say, the problem is most people who are driven away from public transport (for whatever reason) either stop travelling to the city centre to the city centre or start driving. Neither of which is good for the city. The city centre and inner city must bear the considerable cost of those who choose to drive.
The problem you outline could be solved through better driver training and perhaps the installation of a basic camera system so the driver can see more clearly whether the bus is full. The low morale we often encounter in bus drivers in Leeds can be explained by their dire pay and conditions. I must say I have never encountered this problem on The large in other British, American or European cities, including London where buses are very often close to capacity. I can’t say I’ve seen it in Leeds, either, though on the routes I use the buses are rarely full. I don’t doubt it takes place. Effecting a change in passenger behaviour is certainly key and I’d suggest that citizens of a more pro-public transport city, where public transport is the dominant mode (on the London model) would be more polite and accommodating – certainly to the point of moving up to let others on. So public policy is important here, too.