To think Free Parking is the answer to revive our town centres?

[Jumell]

I’ve been thinking a bit about this lately.

Whenever I thought about going to the city centre where I used to live, to shop/browse etc - the main thing that would stop me going was the thought of paying for parking - I’d just think - ‘nah’ - and not bother going in.

i think that if the Govt took the initiative to scrap all charges from car parking companies - NCP/Councils etc etc in town centres / high streets - it would massively revive these shopping centres that we all knew and loved?

She didn't just propose it, but was actually in charge of trying to save a bunch of high streets. It didn't work very well though. She has actually shifted her stance quite a lot and now seems to be more in favor of making sure more people live within walking distance of shops.
Mary Portas hits out at government ‘sh*t show’ as high street businesses fear inflation | The Standard

Mary Portas got involved very briefly in our run down town. Helped get some funding but it was spent stupidly blocking a short road to pedestrianise it and reduce the size of an adjacent car park to create a “space” for events. Of course no events have happened and even more shops have closed.

The reality of all these town centre initiatives is that something which works in a leafy suburb near London doesn’t work in a deprived run down northern seas side resort.

I drive into London almost daily

I find parking in London actually cheaper than my town centre.

I also don’t mind driving in Central London

I can say that the death knell for my home town came during the 1970s when a few counsellors went to France and liked the idea of a pedestrianised with cafes and sitting outside eating croissants and coffee

But sitting outside in Southern France in the sunshine and sitting outside in a grim northern town in the rain, damp and drizzle which take up most of the year are 2 different things but nothing was going to stop the vision

The pedestrianisation of my town centre coincided with the opening of the new shopping mall and immediately the crowds that went out to the town centre on a Saturday disappeared

"The pedestrianisation of my town centre coincided with the opening of the new shopping mall and immediately the crowds that went out to the town centre on a Saturday disappeared"

So maybe it wasn't actually the pedestrianisation to blame?

My home town got pedestrianised at a certain point, although no cafe terraces. Small businesses complained, but the high street is honestly very small and nobody needs to drive right up to the door of the shop they're going to.

@yalta that must be costing you a fortune with the Congestion Charge (unless you are driving for work or something and your vehicle is exempt).
So the parking might be cheaper but driving into London to stroll around Oxford Street isn't really something the average person does.

It’s what most families I know do. We live a train ride away in what’s now a commuter town and it’s cheaper to drive. Any more than one train ticket your breaking even or saving money driving

@BourbonsAreOverated you won't be doing that daily though? Which is what the poster I was responding too said they did.

No, I don’t (but I don’t work in London). I do know someone who does it daily as it’s cheaper, more reliable and safer for late finishes.
she is unusual in that though. Most London commuters round here do train it. It’s the leisure (so, back to this thread, shopping) traveller that drives.

There are 3 of us who car share. It would cost nearly £40 on the train
Staff parking is free and my car is congestion zone exempt
It costs us £5 in total to travel

But even if I chose 4 hours parking on the street, it is cheaper than the town centre parking where I now live

@Yalta ok that makes sense.
But that's a different scenario to driving into central London for a bit of shopping 🙂

Wouldn’t that be nice?

The fact is that council depend on the income from parking charges. They simply could not afford to drop them.

I think since Covid we have grown used to clicking on the internet and waiting for the postie etc to deliver it.

We are lazy. Free parking and Christmas lights aren't going to change the fact that people that the easy option.

The only shops that will survive are supermarkets and places you have to go like hairdressers, nail bars and opticians.

But they also lose revenue from shops, cafes, council attractions etc when their are fewer people in towns and shops/cafes end up having to close. Then the councils have to pay for the resulting anti social problems, policing, damage and vandalism, etc which is more likely when there are fewer shoppers etc in the centre.

VERY short sighted for councils to only look at parking revenue and not the whole picture.

Our town council have the same meeting every year - the minutes of the council meeting are online. Every year, it's reported that fewer cars are parking in their car parks so less revenue than forecast, so they increase the charges to "make up" the lost revenue, and then the year later, they're reporting fewer cars using the car park, so less revenue than forecast, so they increase the charges again. They clearly either have the memory of gold fish or are too stupid to actually understand that it's THEM increasing the parking charges that is causing fewer people to use the car parks. Doh!!

To be honest the way to "save" town centres is to forget about this obsession that they are just a place to go shopping.
My hometown is full of people complaining the town has "no shops" and the closing of M+S "killed the town centre".
M+S didn't close. It moved to a new out of town shopping centre barely 2 or 3 miles down the road (which has free parking and a regular bus service). There's plenty of shops in the town...just not the town centre.
As the town centre is full of small shop units (because it's a lot of old buildings) you aren't going to get many big name retailers moving in - because they don't want a tiny shop in a high st that doesn't even have a loading bay and god forbid they knock down these old (shabby) buildings because they're history 🙄
Time to use the town centres for something else.

Yes, indeed, time to bring all the empty shops and empty floors above the shops into residential use. Trouble is the councils won't allow that either. They've deemed the central areas to be "retail" or "entertainment" in their local plans, so anyone wanting to bring a flat above a shop back into residential use gets their planning permission denied. It's ridiculous.

@taxguru in my home town they pedestrianised the high st in the 90s.
Over the years most of the actual shops have closed and the upper floors have been converted (or updated) into flats.
The problem is for residents there is no parking and they can't drive down the street during daytime hours because it's pedestrianised.
This was also part of why the shops moved out - old buildings with no loading bays and restrictions on what time of day deliveries can arrive - because it's pedestrianised!
They need to re-open the road to traffic. Put residents only parking bays and delivery bays.
The few shops along there will probably survive because all that's left is small ones like newsagents, charity shops and barbers/hairdressers etc.
It's never going to be that cafe culture environment with nice buskers and flower displays. That ship sailed about 25 years ago.
But despite that being so bloody obvious.... it's unlikely to happen 🙁

If we want people living in town centers, it would make more sense to bulldoze a lot of the old buildings (except for the minority which are truly lovely and of genuine historic value, and that's a small %) and build new modern buildings that are an awful lot taller with far more and larger units, and with modern facilities and functions.

People who live in flats deserve better than tiny, crappy, freezing cold Victorian or early 20th century flats with little insulation or soundproofing, no balconies, no facilities for drying clothes, no elevators, windows that are incredibly hard to double glaze and bleed heat etc.

@GreenTeaLikesMe unfortunately a lot of new build flats aren't the greatest 🙁
A very very old building in my hometown recently had the upper floors converted into flats and they have been done really nicely and the flats have been designed with stuff like decent space for washing machines and tumble driers in the kitchen.
But yes....so many of the old Victorian buildings aren't anything special and are in crappy condition.
They could be rebuilt with maybe the frontage kept (to look like it always has) or just build in the old style.

My local town centre has cheap parking but it’s small and so already difficult to find a spot. I imagine being free would make it worse, as it’s also near to a train station.

Then there’s Bluewater which had LOADS of free parking and I can spend up to 10 minutes driving around looking for a space, so I avoid it like the plague.

There is a lot of chat about this where i live. Large town 10 miles from a city. Parking is relatively cheap, £1 for 3 hours in council carparks, about £1.20 ph on street.
During covid carparking was free, couldnt get a space because workers of businesses able to open filled them before 8.30 or commuters to nearest city parked for the train meaning spaces were tied up for the day.
Free parking ime doesnt work for reasons above, certainly in our town, but parking should he affordable and set at a considered rate to allow a good turnover of spaces.

Our high street's shopping centre had some good parking promotions (free parking after 5pm on Thursdays, free parking on Sundays). Those have gone now.

Staines shopping centre now has free parking every after 6pm every day and parking is £2 all day on Sundays.

I think things like this would generate football in the high street again but also allow for an income for the upkeep of the car parks.

I think you could get around that e.g. requiring a ticket to be bought between 10am-12pm.

If you saw the state of our shopping centre.

Oxford street at least has its attractions

@Yalta Oxford Street has only started to improve in the last few months.
They've managed to kick most of those iffy American Candy shops out.
But it still isn't great these days 🙁

More and more Councils are selling off car parking to outside operators, they wont be interested in cutting charges or having 30min or 60min free parking, so the issues of the High street will continue.