The Great Town-Centre Parking Conundrum
by David Palethorpe
There are certain subjects guaranteed to produce an animated discussion at almost any council meeting.
Planning.
Potholes.
Bin collections.
And, of course, parking.
Mention parking and perfectly reasonable people who have just spent the previous two hours agreeing on absolutely everything can suddenly look at each other as though they are about to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
Because apparently, when it comes to the future of our town centres, there is one thing we can all agree on:
We want them to be exactly as they were 40 years ago.
And we want to drive there.
And park for free.
And preferably park immediately outside the shop.
And we would quite like some nice trees while we’re at it.
This is where things become interesting.
Because I have a sneaking suspicion that the town centre we remember from 40 or 50 years ago wasn’t quite the town centre, we think it was.
The memories, of course, are genuine.
There was the bustling marketplace.
The busy High Street.
The independent butcher.
The greengrocer.
The post office.
The little shops where somebody knew your name and probably knew your business as well.
There were national retailers alongside independent businesses.
There were people everywhere.
It was, in the terminology of modern town-centre strategy documents, “vibrant”.
Nobody needed to write a strategy document to tell them.
They simply went into town.
And, for many people, they went by bus.
That bit is rather important.
Because the town centre of 50 years ago was built around a very different pattern of life.
Car ownership was lower.
Public transport was more widely used.
Bus services were more frequent in many places.
And if you went shopping, you didn’t necessarily expect to put the entire contents of the High Street into the boot of your car.
Indeed, if you are of a certain age, you will remember being dragged into town by your mother and then spending the journey home carrying shopping bags while wondering why your parents had decided that this particular Saturday afternoon was necessary.
Then things changed.
We became more affluent.
We bought cars.
Lots of cars.
And why wouldn’t we?
The motor car gave people freedom.
It made life easier.
It allowed families to travel further.
It allowed people to carry more shopping.
It allowed us to live further from where we worked.
And slowly but surely, we redesigned our towns around it.
Now, several decades later, we are standing in the middle of the consequences and wondering what on earth happened to the High Street.
And our proposed solution appears to be:
More parking.
Free parking.
Lots of it.
Preferably everywhere.
There is, however, a small contradiction here.
If the problem is that our town centres have too many cars, then adding more parking isn’t necessarily the most revolutionary solution ever conceived.
And if we want to reduce congestion, encouraging more people to drive into town may not be entirely helpful.
But the argument for free parking is remarkably persistent.
Businesses understandably say that parking charges discourage customers.
Some residents say the same.
Politicians hear it.
Councillors hear it.
And because nobody wants to be the person who says, “Actually, perhaps we shouldn’t make the parking free,” it becomes rather tempting to nod sympathetically and move on.
But let’s take the argument to its logical conclusion.
Suppose parking costs £3 for two hours.
You are going into town to meet a friend for coffee.
The coffee costs £4.50.
The cake costs £4.
Parking costs £3.
Are you really going to cancel?
“Sorry, Sandra. I was looking forward to seeing you, but the council has charged me £3 to park. I’ll see you next month.”
Or perhaps you’re going out for lunch.
You are going to spend £15, £20 or £25 per person.
But then you discover that parking costs £3.
“Right. That’s it. Back home. We’ll have beans on toast.”
I don’t think so.
Of course parking charges can influence behaviour.
Of course people notice them.
And of course businesses are entitled to be concerned about anything that might discourage customers.
But it is worth asking whether parking is really the great villain we have decided it is.
Because there is another rather inconvenient truth.
Car parking charges generate income for councils.
And councils have bills.
Quite a lot of them.
The money doesn’t disappear into a mysterious vault beneath the town hall where council officers spend their evenings swimming through piles of pound coins.
It contributes to the wider finances of local government.
And that money helps support services.
Homelessness services.
Support for vulnerable residents.
Planning.
Community transport.
Citizens Advice.
Disability access grants.
Leisure services.
Waste collection.
A whole range of things that people tend to regard as extremely important right up until somebody suggests that paying for parking might help fund them.
Then suddenly the parking charge becomes an outrage.
There is also the small matter of public transport.
For decades, we have gradually allowed bus services to become less attractive, less frequent and, in many places, less viable.
And then we wonder why everyone gets in the car.
It isn’t exactly a mystery.
If the bus takes forever, doesn’t turn up when you need it, costs a fortune and involves standing in the rain for 25 minutes, while your car is sitting on the driveway, then the car is going to look remarkably attractive.
And when more people use cars, congestion increases.
When congestion increases, buses get slower.
When buses get slower, people use them less.
When fewer people use them, services become less viable.
And services are reduced.
And around we go again.
It’s a magnificent little vicious circle.
And then we complain that nobody uses the bus.
There is another issue which fascinates me.
Green space.
Everyone loves green space.
Nobody has ever attended a public meeting and shouted:
“I’m absolutely furious. There are too many trees.”
Trees are popular.
Benches are popular.
Flowers are popular.
Nice places to sit are popular.
So when someone says that we need to make our town centres greener, it sounds entirely sensible.
But where are we going to put the green?
Because, unless we are proposing to demolish half the High Street, we aren’t going to be planting trees where shops currently stand.
Many of those buildings are privately owned anyway.
And businesses need servicing.
Goods have to arrive.
Deliveries have to be made.
Stock doesn’t simply teleport into the back of a shop.
So we are left with open spaces.
And what do we have a lot of?
Car parks.
Ah.
Suddenly the solution becomes rather more complicated.
Because the car park is the easiest bit of town-centre land to turn into a lovely green public space.
Take away the tarmac.
Plant some trees.
Put in some benches.
Maybe a little café.
Perhaps some flowers.
Everyone applauds.
Then someone asks:
“Where are we supposed to park?”
Silence.
And this is the point where we need to stop pretending that town-centre regeneration is about finding one clever answer.
It isn’t.
There isn’t a magic parking policy.
There isn’t a magic tree.
There isn’t a magic High Street grant.
And there certainly isn’t a magic phrase that can make people shop in the same way they did in 1978.
Because we don’t.
We shop online.
We shop at supermarkets.
We use retail parks.
We have food delivered to our homes.
We work differently.
We travel differently.
We live differently.
So perhaps our town centres need to be different too.
Maybe the future High Street isn’t primarily about shopping.
Maybe it is about living.
Working.
Eating.
Meeting people.
Entertainment.
Culture.
Leisure.
Community.
Experiences.
Perhaps the reason to visit a town centre shouldn’t simply be that you need to buy something.
Perhaps you should go because you actually want to be there.
That sounds like a remarkably simple idea.
It is also considerably harder to deliver.
Because it requires us to think about the whole town rather than one car park.
It means thinking about housing.
Transport.
Parking.
Businesses.
Public spaces.
Green space.
Markets.
Culture.
Leisure.
And the rather unfashionable concept of having a reason for people to visit.
Every town needs to understand what makes it different.
What is its identity?
What makes somebody living 15 miles away think:
“Do you know what? Let’s go there on Saturday.”
That might be a market.
It might be an historic centre.
It might be independent shops.
It might be restaurants.
It might be a river.
It might be a theatre.
It might be a festival.
It might be somewhere genuinely pleasant to spend a few hours.
But it has to be something.
Because if the only selling point is that there is a car park near a collection of shops selling things that can be bought cheaper online, we may have a slight problem.
And perhaps this is where our obsession with recreating the past becomes unhelpful.
We shouldn’t try to build the town centre of 1975.
We can’t.
The people are different.
The economy is different.
The technology is different.
Our habits are different.
And, perhaps most importantly, we have considerably more cars.
So the question shouldn’t be:
“How do we get back to how things were?”
It should be:
“What do we want our town to become?”
That is a much harder question.
But it is also a much more interesting one.
And it might finally get us away from the endless argument about whether parking should cost £2, £3 or nothing at all.
Because perhaps the future of our town centres shouldn’t be decided by the price of a parking ticket.
Perhaps it should be decided by whether people actually want to get out of their cars, walk around, meet other people, spend some money and, crucially, enjoy being there.
And if we can achieve that, then maybe we can have our trees.
We can have our buses.
We can have our shops.
We can have our cafés.
We can even have our cars.
We just can’t have absolutely everything, absolutely everywhere, absolutely free.
Because sadly, despite what some people seem to think, town planning isn’t a buffet.
You can’t simply take everything you fancy and leave the bill for somebody else.
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