all talk and no action
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Parking in Bath: a laugh a minute
Bath & North East Somerset Council, the people who are overseeing the building of the Bath Spa, a project which has cost £36.2 million to date, is a massive £22.7 million over budget, and has missed its opening date by over three years, has turned its attentions to the city's car parks. Not content with pay-and-display machines, the council has fitted the car parks with a pay-as-you-leave system. Not a huge undertaking, you'd think, given that this scheme is already in place in loads of other car parks all over the country.
But this is Bath. In Charlotte Street car park, where many of the city's workers park each day, it's been chaos, with barriers positioned right after a blind bend, making it a struggle to get close enough to the machine to push the ticket button on the way in, and worse, refusing to open to let people out when they want to leave. On Tuesday, I sat in a queue for 30 minutes while cars in front of me were stuck at the barrier before I managed to clear enough space to turn my car around and head for another exit where I was able to use my ticket to get out. (It seems some tickets are blessed, a bit like the Willy Wonka golden ticket of car parks.)
Later that evening, people broke down a barrier while one frustrated person crashed their car through another. Executive member of transport and highways, Councillor Sir Elgar Jenkins', response? "Well, they shouldn't have done that." What else were they supposed to do?
The next day the council promised that everything would be fixed by the end of the week. In the meantime, you'd think they'd leave the barriers up so people could go home.
Unfortunately not. Today was the same, with people stuck at the barriers and queues of annoyed people behind them. At least this time there was a car park attendant at the barrier, though he seemed unable to help with the problem. When I complained about the inconvenience, he responded that it wasn't his fault. No doubt he's right and he's not personally responsible for the operation of the barriers, but the council should have ensured that either the machines were fixed, someone was there who could manually lift the barriers, or they should have just removed them until the card-reading machines worked properly.
Perhaps the thought of losing another day's takings was too much to bear. After all, they'll be making around £4 million pounds profit from the city's car parks this year, with Charlotte Street alone expected to bring in £1,615,708, according The Bath Chronicle. Surely a little bit of that could be spent on ensuring people can actually get out of the place when they want to go home?
Next up for Bath & NES Council is a massive redevelopment of the Southgate Shopping Centre. What could possibly go wrong?
If you're visiting Bath in the next couple of weeks, you might want to arrive by train.
But this is Bath. In Charlotte Street car park, where many of the city's workers park each day, it's been chaos, with barriers positioned right after a blind bend, making it a struggle to get close enough to the machine to push the ticket button on the way in, and worse, refusing to open to let people out when they want to leave. On Tuesday, I sat in a queue for 30 minutes while cars in front of me were stuck at the barrier before I managed to clear enough space to turn my car around and head for another exit where I was able to use my ticket to get out. (It seems some tickets are blessed, a bit like the Willy Wonka golden ticket of car parks.)
Later that evening, people broke down a barrier while one frustrated person crashed their car through another. Executive member of transport and highways, Councillor Sir Elgar Jenkins', response? "Well, they shouldn't have done that." What else were they supposed to do?
The next day the council promised that everything would be fixed by the end of the week. In the meantime, you'd think they'd leave the barriers up so people could go home.
Unfortunately not. Today was the same, with people stuck at the barriers and queues of annoyed people behind them. At least this time there was a car park attendant at the barrier, though he seemed unable to help with the problem. When I complained about the inconvenience, he responded that it wasn't his fault. No doubt he's right and he's not personally responsible for the operation of the barriers, but the council should have ensured that either the machines were fixed, someone was there who could manually lift the barriers, or they should have just removed them until the card-reading machines worked properly.
Perhaps the thought of losing another day's takings was too much to bear. After all, they'll be making around £4 million pounds profit from the city's car parks this year, with Charlotte Street alone expected to bring in £1,615,708, according The Bath Chronicle. Surely a little bit of that could be spent on ensuring people can actually get out of the place when they want to go home?
Next up for Bath & NES Council is a massive redevelopment of the Southgate Shopping Centre. What could possibly go wrong?
If you're visiting Bath in the next couple of weeks, you might want to arrive by train.
posted by paul, 7:44 PM
3 Comments:
Maybe it's an elaborate scheme to de-normalise car use.
They've actually got a working pay-as-you-leave scheme close at hand to get tips from. The Waitrose car park is operated like this and as far as I know there's never been huge queues to get out of there. You'd think someone from the council would have had a nose down there. I think the main problem is the layout of Charlotte St - the Avon street one seems to work okay.
Maybe it's an elaborate scheme to de-normalise car use.
That thought had crossed my mind :)
That thought had crossed my mind :)
