Fighting Exceessive Car Park charges ....

[The Ham]

Parking costs are emotive, however they are needed. Often they are needed to be as high as they are for various reasons (including, but not limited to, to limit demand, to be comparable to other car parks* and to cover costs including potential replacement/expansion).

There are many ways to avoid car parking charges (bearing in mind that they are only a part of quite an expense which is owning a car), these include walking, cycling, taxis, buses or any viable combination of the above.

* hospital car parks often have to be priced to be similar to those around them, especially in London.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The thing I object to about car parks is not paying for them, in the end I am renting a piece of land to put my car on and there's no more reason I should get that free than a piece of land to live on. The thing I object to is the unfriendliness of the payment methods.

Imagine a railway where it was mandatory to pay by TVM but they were coins only, where the railway is considered to be closed if they aren't working etc... (Actually, that railway is Nederlandse Spoorwegen, but never mind )

Mobile apps do improve this, though. I quite like RingGo which MK Council uses. I do wish the railway would all use it as well, LM don't, and don't use the app provided by their parking contractor (Indigo) either. Also very good is camera-enforced pay on exit as the Lake District National Park is now using.

 

[Trog]

Another downside to expensive station parking is that people park in nearby residential roads to avoid the fee.

My home road is almost empty of cars at week-ends and bank holidays. But on working days there are parked cars almost nose to tail all along it. The most annoying thing about this is that they are often BMW's, sports cars etc that have been driven in from the expensive outlying villages. Yet the owners are avoiding paying for a season ticket for parking. The parking is often inconsiderate making access to driveways difficult, the instruction in the high way code not to park at junctions is ignored, and once the half way sensible spaces are all filled they start parking half on the road and half on the pavement.

The chaos is made worse by having a school in the next road, so twice a day we have fat arsed Mums delivering and collecting their chubby children, how some of those Mums passed their driving tests I will never know, I can only assume that the Driving Test Examiners could not face seeing them again.

 

[Aldaniti]

My nearest Virgin station charges a tenner to park for the day. The cost of a ticket to the three destinations I travel to most is slightly less than the parking fee, but slightly more than the variable costs of driving there. Parking at the three destinations is free (in one case) and less than a fiver at the other two, so I tend to drive for the whole journey these days.

For longer distance journeys, unless I book in advance, the variable costs of driving are now often a little cheaper than walk-up train fares, even off-peak Day Returns. Add in the parking charges .........

The only destination to where I would never drive is London. I had a spell driving to Warwick Parkway so that I can avoid the increasingly busy and unpleasant Pendolino's on the Anglo-Scottish services, but the M6 through Cheshire can be pretty awful too, so it's back to the Pendolino's, which are still as awful, but the experience is over with much more quickly. :lol

 

[Holly]

The thing I object to about car parks is not paying for them, in the end I am renting a piece of land to put my car on and there's no more reason I should get that free than a piece of land to live on. The thing I object to is the unfriendliness of the payment methods.

Imagine a railway where it was mandatory to pay by TVM but they were coins only, where the railway is considered to be closed if they aren't working etc... (Actually, that railway is Nederlandse Spoorwegen, but never mind )

Mobile apps do improve this, though. I quite like RingGo which MK Council uses. I do wish the railway would all use it as well, LM don't, and don't use the app provided by their parking contractor (Indigo) either. Also very good is camera-enforced pay on exit as the Lake District National Park is now using.

I agree about unfriendly payments.
But I wouldn't call paying using coins unfriendly.

That's the purpose of money after all - a convenient way to make payments and purchases. Coins are sound money, other things are less so.

Perhaps you just need to carry money more often?

 

[route:oxford]

I agree about unfriendly payments.
But I wouldn't call paying using coins unfriendly.

That's the purpose of money after all - a convenient way to make payments and purchases. Coins are sound money, other things are less so.

Perhaps you just need to carry money more often?

The main issue with paying with cash is the lack of change provision at most pre-payment meters.

It wouldn't be so bad if there were pro-rata minutes for over-payment of published stages.

 

[ainsworth74]

I agree about unfriendly payments.
But I wouldn't call paying using coins unfriendly.

That's the purpose of money after all - a convenient way to make payments and purchases. Coins are sound money, other things are less so.

Perhaps you just need to carry money more often?

I need to spend £12 per week (4 x £3) on car parking machines which only accept coins (thankfully I do get it all back in expenses) carrying enough change for that is a constant battle. A ticket machine that took a card would be a god send.

 

[deltic08]

Err?
Because on many journeys it is cheaper to catch the train than take the car.
Eg London return £44:10 by train, over £50 by car.

You must be in the minority. I discovered recently that a friend of mine had died and his funeral was the next day. Fare by Cross Country from my most convenient railhead 25 miles away plus £18 car park to within four miles of the church £105. Door to door by car in less time than train £65 return.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Those people who need to use the train frequently and live some distance from the station must accept that their lifestyle choice will result in certain costs. They certainly shouldn't be expecting to be subsidised by those who have chosen a more sustainable lifestyle.

I read somewhere, some years ago, that it costs an employer typically £400 per year per space to provide employee parking. Station parking, often being on more valuable land and always requiring means of payment and enforcement, probably costs more. As an unregulated part of their business it's likely that TOCs will be charging what the market will bear for station parking, but the above figure suggests that fchages ees are not wildly out of line with costs.

Taxis can be unreliable but sometimes so can private cars - there's always the risk of a mechanical problem or a blockage on the road to the station.

Twice in my lifetime my local station has been closed where I lived. Both had free parking. It was not a lifestyle choice to live there. I was born at the first location and the second location was where my job was after university so I lived there. You are talking absolute rubbish. I choose to stay where I live now because I have lived here for over 40 years. My next move will be into a box permanently.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The main issue with paying with cash is the lack of change provision at most pre-payment meters.

It wouldn't be so bad if there were pro-rata minutes for over-payment of published stages.

Card payment is the solution - contactless specifically. I was very pleased to see this added to the main car park at Ambleside when I last used it.

The ones at Bletchley take card but they are very slow. I believe you can buy parking from the TVM as well but you then have to walk back to display it. Maybe a TVM outside in the car park would solve it.

 

[deltic08]

Parking costs are emotive, however they are needed. Often they are needed to be as high as they are for various reasons (including, but not limited to, to limit demand, to be comparable to other car parks* and to cover costs including potential replacement/expansion).

There are many ways to avoid car parking charges (bearing in mind that they are only a part of quite an expense which is owning a car), these include walking, cycling, taxis, buses or any viable combination of the above.

My railhead is too far to walk or cycle for someone of my age, taxi is £20 each way. This all makes car the easiest and usually cheapest method to travel for me.

 

[edwin_m]

You must be in the minority. I discovered recently that a friend of mine had died and his funeral was the next day. Fare by Cross Country from my most convenient railhead 25 miles away plus £18 car park to within four miles of the church £105. Door to door by car in less time than train £65 return.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---


Twice in my lifetime my local station has been closed where I lived. Both had free parking. It was not a lifestyle choice to live there. I was born at the first location and the second location was where my job was after university so I lived there. You are talking absolute rubbish. I choose to stay where I live now because I have lived here for over 40 years. My next move will be into a box permanently.

The railway can't provide for all possible journeys. Maybe it tried to in the pre-Beeching era but there was far less travel in those days and some journeys would have been difficult even then. The advent of widespread car use killed off many of the railways and (helped by our inability to integrate buses and trains in the UK) therefore led to further car use, but I don't think that particular genie can be put back in the bottle. Much as we might wish otherwise, there are some journeys for which the car makes more sense, and much as I try to support rail I would also have chosen the car had I been faced with the choice you outline (presumably you would also have had two taxi fares at the far end). Being Cross Country the train was no doubt full enough so they probably didn't feel they needed your custom anyway. Would you have chosen differently had the parking been £5 - and what would happen if you missed your train through no spaces being available?

Considering how few closures there have been since the 70s, it is overwhelmingly probable that the two you have suffered were several decades back - did the enquiries consider that you suffered hardship?

If easy access to the rail network was essential to you then you could have chosen at any time during this period to move to somewhere more convenient for a station. Not doing so is, when push comes to shove, a lifestyle choice (and you use the word "choose" yourself - the term "life choice" might be less offensive but means the same thing) . I'm not saying that was the wrong choice for you, but I do suggest that no choice is perfect, all of them have some downsides and that you have chosen to do what you did because other upsides made it worth accepting.

Sorry to be hard-nosed about this, but the railway isn't a social service and it certainly shouldn't be subsidising low-cost parking for those that choose to drive to the station at the expense of those that make more sustainable choices.

 

[Llanigraham]

You must be in the minority. I discovered recently that a friend of mine had died and his funeral was the next day. Fare by Cross Country from my most convenient railhead 25 miles away plus £18 car park to within four miles of the church £105. Door to door by car in less time than train £65 return.

I doubt I am in a minority, at all. It is called "planning". I know when the meetings I attend in London are going to be so book the tickets 3 to 4 weeks in advance, thereby saving me money.
The cost of tickets to Shrewsbury are standard walk-on fares and are still cheaper than taking the car, as stated.

 

[The Ham]

I doubt I am in a minority, at all. It is called "planning". I know when the meetings I attend in London are going to be so book the tickets 3 to 4 weeks in advance, thereby saving me money.
The cost of tickets to Shrewsbury are standard walk-on fares and are still cheaper than taking the car, as stated.

Planning almost always makes things cheaper. If you go out for the day and take your own food it's cheaper, if you drive somewhere and don't just fill up with fuel as you need it (more likely to be at a services) it is likely to cost you more. Very rarely does convenance and flexibility end up being cheaper than being fixed (although there are, as always a few exceptions)

 

[DarloRich]

Not having a car I cant really comment! You can park for free at my station anyway

 

[JohnB57]

Sorry to be hard-nosed about this, but the railway isn't a social service and it certainly shouldn't be subsidising low-cost parking for those that choose to drive to the station at the expense of those that make more sustainable choices.

The definition of a social service is something provided by the government that benefits the community. If subsidised train services don't provide benefit to the wider community, why does government subsidise them? I realise transport doesn't conventionally fall within the Social Services remit, but it seems to fit the description.

And, of course, driving to a railway station and switching to train at an early point in a journey could well be the most sustainable choice available to that individual. The most sustainable choice would be not to make the journey at all. Can you say that all your journeys are strictly necessary?

I don't think you're being hard nosed, but your comments do come across as a little holier-than thou.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

* hospital car parks often have to be priced to be similar to those around them, especially in London.

False.

Most hospital car parks are run/managed by private companies who can charge what they like, but pay a levvy to the hospital. I don't agree with their parking charges but that is OT for this discussion

 

[jon0844]

Another downside to expensive station parking is that people park in nearby residential roads to avoid the fee.

My home road is almost empty of cars at week-ends and bank holidays. But on working days there are parked cars almost nose to tail all along it. The most annoying thing about this is that they are often BMW's, sports cars etc that have been driven in from the expensive outlying villages. Yet the owners are avoiding paying for a season ticket for parking. The parking is often inconsiderate making access to driveways difficult, the instruction in the high way code not to park at junctions is ignored, and once the half way sensible spaces are all filled they start parking half on the road and half on the pavement.

The chaos is made worse by having a school in the next road, so twice a day we have fat arsed Mums delivering and collecting their chubby children, how some of those Mums passed their driving tests I will never know, I can only assume that the Driving Test Examiners could not face seeing them again.

If you're on a private road then surely you can take action to stop people using your road to park or drop off and pick up chubby children?

Maybe arrange a barrier to stop people entering? Then every resident has a card, or you even use an ANPR system to open automatically?

That way other people will only be able to park on public highways, subject to parking restrictions.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't think the OP said it was a private road?

He could of course petition the Council to introduce a residents' parking scheme, but he will of course quite rightly[1] have to pay for a permit in that case.

[1] Except in the case of such schemes, nobody has the exclusive right to park outside their house unless they have a driveway or garage etc. It is quite right that they should pay to gain such a right.

 

[Trog]

If you're on a private road then surely you can take action to stop people using your road to park or drop off and pick up chubby children?

Maybe arrange a barrier to stop people entering? Then every resident has a card, or you even use an ANPR system to open automatically?

That way other people will only be able to park on public highways, subject to parking restrictions.

Public road, but as I have one car and enough drive space for three they can put down double yellows when ever they like.

 

[jon0844]

Fair enough then. So your problem is really only those who park too near a junction or drive, not the rest of the road where they can park and without being judged based on the car they drive!

 

[Trog]

Am not hugely bothered I just think it is ironic that they spend a fortune on a flash car and a home in the country, then are too tight to pay to park at the station.

 

[Barn]

False.

Most hospital car parks are run/managed by private companies who can charge what they like, but pay a levvy to the hospital. I don't agree with their parking charges but that is OT for this discussion

Isn't the point that, if the hospital decided to be cheaper than the competition, people would just use the hospital's car park when visiting the area? I read the post as referring to local market realities rather than regulatory requirements.

 

[Butts]

Luckily most Hospital Car Parks in Scotland are free so I don't have to worry about that particular area of charges.

With regards to Rail I think it is amazing that most of the old "Centro Area" in the West Midlands have free parking at some Stations. Cradley Heath, Rowley Regis and Sandwell & Dudley to mention but three have huge free car parks. I take it this is to encourage people not to take Cars into Birmingham and Wolverhampton.

Strange this mantra operates at a regional level but not on a national basis. Go into Birmingham and Wolverhampton and the free parking disappears.

With regard to Falkirk although High has a Chargeable Facility at the Station there is a Council One next door that it is free. I normally walk to Falkirk Grahamston as it is only 10 mins from where I live.

 

[jon0844]

Am not hugely bothered I just think it is ironic that they spend a fortune on a flash car and a home in the country, then are too tight to pay to park at the station.

Maybe saving money here and there allows for a nice car and country home!

 

[talltim]

I've lived in locations chosen (partly) for the walking distance to the station my whole life (except when I was at university) my father commuted into London, so walking distance from Cambridge, Hatfield and Harpenden stations it was, then the same for the two places I've lived with my wife in Chesterfield (although currently it's just that bit to far for a comfortable walk, the last five minutes home get a bit depressing!)
So, it's not hard, you just have to have it as one of your priorities when choosing where to live.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I do quite fancy living here, middle on nowhere, 10 minutes walk from the station
https://goo.gl/maps/YzzHRS4iEzL2

 

[edwin_m]

Luckily most Hospital Car Parks in Scotland are free so I don't have to worry about that particular area of charges.

But can you get a space when you need one?

With regards to Rail I think it is amazing that most of the old "Centro Area" in the West Midlands have free parking at some Stations. Cradley Heath, Rowley Regis and Sandwell & Dudley to mention but three have huge free car parks. I take it this is to encourage people not to take Cars into Birmingham and Wolverhampton.

Strange this mantra operates at a regional level but not on a national basis. Go into Birmingham and Wolverhampton and the free parking disappears.

Exactly right. The main reason Centro runs local trains into Birmingham and Wolverhampton is to provide an alternative to the car and thereby reduce car use in the most sensitive city centre areas. So it makes sense to provide free or cheap car parking at the suburban stations. Sandwell & Dudley is an interesting one as it provides direct access to intercity services, but I'm sure Centro doesn't mind if someone parks at Cradley Heath and uses a local train to connect to a London train.

The opposite applies in the city centres - parking attracts more drivers into the city. It's also much more expensive to provide and takes up land which could be used for something much more productive - even a car park for use by shoppers will be better for the local economy. So any parking at city centre stations will be a premium product and priced accordingly.

 

[Kite159]

My local station charges a reasonable amount per day, and even with a Controlled Parking Zone on the roads around the station, the commuters will still park just outside the zone and walk ~ 5 minutes to save the fee.

Although I wonder how many commuters for Andover will keep parking for free on local roads even when the new car-park is open.

Only thing which bugs is that bank holiday parking charges are the same as the weekday parking charges, which must put some potential passengers off when it's a Saturday service

 

[Aldaniti]

Am not hugely bothered I just think it is ironic that they spend a fortune on a flash car and a home in the country, then are too tight to pay to park at the station.

About 90% of new car sales are made on credit terms, and a very large proportion are simply leased - so they never own the car. They could be too tight, yes, that's how some people accumulate wealth, but equally they could be in that much debt that they can't even afford to pay the parking charge. I've come across plenty like that in my time.

 

[jopsuk]

well... the OP hasn't been active whilst logged in since three minutes after they posted. They may not have even seen us shooting down their entire concept

 

[Bletchleyite]

About 90% of new car sales are made on credit terms, and a very large proportion are simply leased - so they never own the car. They could be too tight, yes, that's how some people accumulate wealth, but equally they could be in that much debt that they can't even afford to pay the parking charge. I've come across plenty like that in my time.

Indeed, running a large house is expensive business, and many people who do own a large house in the country have plenty of capital tied up in it but surprisingly little actual cash.

Worth noting that in the business world most businesses fail for lack of cashflow, not lack of profit.