Revised On Street Parking Charges

[RJRB]

1 hour ago, Planner1 said:

Are they?

 

Can you produce any figures which confirm that?

I think a straw poll would settle that argument .

[Planner1]

2 minutes ago, RJRB said:

I think a straw poll would settle that argument .

Doesn’t give you hard facts to back up the opinions though.

 

Plenty of people say that these initiatives have been successful. Can’t think of any who have produced facts and figures to underpin the claim though..

[RJRB]

 

3 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

Doesn’t give you hard facts to back up the opinions though.

 

Plenty of people say that these initiatives have been successful. Can’t think of any who have produced facts and figures to underpin the claim though..

But if our civil servants and governments get public approval from their schemes that must be rather satisfying.

Not everything (or perhaps everything) can be proven with statistics.

[Planner1]

1 hour ago, RJRB said:

 

But if our civil servants and governments get public approval from their schemes that must be rather satisfying.

Not everything (or perhaps everything) can be proven with statistics.

If they give something away free and say it’s been successful, does anyone question it? Not in my experience. So why would they waste time effort and money on checking the answer to a question that hasn’t been asked, or they might not like the answer to.

[RJRB]

54 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

If they give something away free and say it’s been successful, does anyone question it? Not in my experience. So why would they waste time effort and money on checking the answer to a question that hasn’t been asked, or they might not like the answer to.

I would hope that they are the ones that are asking the pertinent questions of themselves and hopefully forestalling the public questioning.

[BigAl1]

One would hope that there was some evidence that offering free parking after 15.00 was successful otherwise the council would be guilty of basically reducing much needed revenue that could be spent on............................................... new cycle lanes?

 

could be as simple as loss of revenue is less than the cost of employing the wardens to enforce

[Planner1]

3 hours ago, Bigal1 said:

One would hope that there was some evidence that offering free parking after 15.00 was successful otherwise the council would be guilty of basically reducing much needed revenue that could be spent on............................................... new cycle lanes?

 

could be as simple as loss of revenue is less than the cost of employing the wardens to enforce

Surplus income from parking (ie profit) can be spent on highway improvements or maintenance

 

In Sheffield the surplus is put towards the paying the cost of the Amey contract.

 

It isn't as simple as you make out. The civil enforcement officers (CEO's) are paid anyway, so there is no real reduction in cost arising from a free parking offer.

 

In somewhere like Sheffield, where there is actually,  if anything, too much parking, my thought is that free parking in council spaces just means that those spaces tend to fill up first, so people might park in a council space instead of the private sector one they might normally have used. It might influence some people to come when the parking is free instead of the time they'd normally come , but I doubt very much whether many people come specifically because the parking is free (on a free after three initiative you are only saving a couple of quid).

 

You would struggle to find any meaningful data about how effective fee parking initiatives are, because there are many factors which influence when/if someone comes into town, so it's quite difficult to glean meaningful data. Also it's difficult to get accurate footfall data or the occupancy data from private sector car parks or bus / tram ridership numbers, never mind getting all the businesses in town to share details of how much they took in the free period compared to normal. So, calculating the real effect of a free parking initiative would be very time consuming and difficult.

 

You will get lots of people "welcoming" these initiatives and labelling it as "successful" but the truth is, there is a lack of hard evidence. Businesses are prone to grossly over-estimating the number of their customers who come to them by car, so they tend to think that anything that brings more people to town by car is good for trade. However, research has shown that in fact, more come by other means than by car and those who walk and cycle to the shops actually spend more money overall than the car drivers.

[Parkside]

15 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

Surplus income from parking (ie profit) can be spent on highway improvements or maintenance

 

In Sheffield the surplus is put towards the paying the cost of the Amey contract.

 

It isn't as simple as you make out. The civil enforcement officers (CEO's) are paid anyway, so there is no real reduction in cost arising from a free parking offer.

 

In somewhere like Sheffield, where there is actually,  if anything, too much parking, my thought is that free parking in council spaces just means that those spaces tend to fill up first, so people might park in a council space instead of the private sector one they might normally have used. It might influence some people to come when the parking is free instead of the time they'd normally come , but I doubt very much whether many people come specifically because the parking is free (on a free after three initiative you are only saving a couple of quid).

 

You would struggle to find any meaningful data about how effective fee parking initiatives are, because there are many factors which influence when/if someone comes into town, so it's quite difficult to glean meaningful data. Also it's difficult to get accurate footfall data or the occupancy data from private sector car parks or bus / tram ridership numbers, never mind getting all the businesses in town to share details of how much they took in the free period compared to normal. So, calculating the real effect of a free parking initiative would be very time consuming and difficult.

 

You will get lots of people "welcoming" these initiatives and labelling it as "successful" but the truth is, there is a lack of hard evidence. Businesses are prone to grossly over-estimating the number of their customers who come to them by car, so they tend to think that anything that brings more people to town by car is good for trade. However, research has shown that in fact, more come by other means than by car and those who walk and cycle to the shops actually spend more money overall than the car drivers.

Thats a load of codswallop do you  mean to say that all these large stores in Town actually make more money from people who cycle  or walk into town? .

 

[BigAl1]

21 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

 

It isn't as simple as you make out. The civil enforcement officers (CEO's) are paid anyway, so there is no real reduction in cost arising from a free parking offer.

 

 

Ever heard of reducing the number employed or reducing overtime or the hours worked

[Planner1]

1 hour ago, Bigal1 said:

Ever heard of reducing the number employed or reducing overtime or the hours worked

What we are discussing are time limited free parking initiatives like they have at Chistmas. They tend to be for a few days only. The CEO's are full time employees, you can't just lay them off when it suits you.

 

The CEO's don't just enforce overstays or non-payment on pay and display spaces, they do a lot more than that. They would still be needed even if parking was completely free.