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?

And your town may be an excellent example of where free parking could help regenerate the town centre

but the point I am making is that not all towns are the same and for some any increase in car usage would be disastrous.

Meanwhile in my locality charges go up and up and up and they extended the time you have to pay to kill places off in the evening too. In some places parking is going from 20p for half an hour to £2!! So all those locals just nipping to grab something on their way home from work, or grabbing a prescription, now have to pay £2! Our council has done nothing but run three really good market towns into the ground over the last few years and two out of three are 95% independent businesses. Apparently the charges are going up in order to raise £625k to replace all the (not broken) parking payment machines. Except they neglected to say they are borrowing £625k to pay for said payment machines at a cost of £75k a year in interest payments!! They literally piss money up against the wall because it isn't their money and they don't care how it's spent as long as their mates get the contracts.

I live near 3 market towns and they all offer a lot of free parking. I won't pretend that the retail sector is fairing well generally. However in these towns it's performing better than many other nearby places that charge for parking.

Buses and Park N Ride are fine for "long" shops, but if you just want to quickly get something, you're not going to waste half a day driving to the PNR or hanging around waiting for buses, when you could just drive and be in and out within half an hour. So you'll drive to the retail park or out of town supermarket instead, not only to save time, but also to save having to pay to park in the town centre. Fewer and fewer people work in the town centre, and they're wanting to shop on the way to or from somewhere else, often that "somewhere else" not being on a decent bus route, hence why they're driving.

Park for free in my town all you like, there's barely any shops there once you've parked!

Yes thats what happens when you let the town go to the dogs, its too late.

Councils rely too much on the income generated by car parking.

Regenerate? Nope, you need to the footfall up before it goes down hill too far.

After that, the town has had it, will take millions to change.

My point is that in the vast amount of towns, free/v cheap parking, where the town hasn't gone too far, will bring immediate increases in footfall and hence spend.
Yes there maybe places where increased car use will be bad but i doubt those places are doing badly in the first place.

Of course they do, but if towns die, no one parks, no income....

Very short term, the new Govt needs to break this reliance and make sure money is spent more wisely.

So we don’t actually disagree then.

We used to have 2 hrs free and I went most weekends as did loads of people as seen by the amount of cars in the car parks
now it’s pay and display I haven’t been since
and I bet a lot of stores have noticed the lack of footfall because of it

The answer to reviving town or even city centres is providing goods and services that people want and are able to pay for.
This is not a new phenomenon. I was in the city I grew up in in 2019, few shops lots of fast food places.

I know exactly what would happen if parking were free in my town. The majority of people who currently travel to work by public transport would start driving instead, occupying all the town-centre car parks before 9 am. Then anyone coming into town later in the day for shopping, etc., would have nowhere at all to park.

I rarely go into Bristol because it costs me £9 to enter Clean Air Zone. (I have a 13 plate diesel car that I cannot afford to replace ).Once you add fuel (i live a couple of miles outside city) wear and tear on the car and parking costs I've easily spent £12 before I've even bought anything. If I park a bit further from the shopping quarter then I'm into the Residents Parking Zones.
Bath is just as bad. Their council run car parks use a pay and display system where you enter your registration and it calculates your parking costs based on your vehicle type.

Independents would consider high street stores again if there were enough passing customers to make it worth their while.

I've talked about this with owners of independent stores in my local area, they don't just vanish... they gradually get moved out of the shopping areas to the outskirts as rents increase, until eventually they give up... but if the footfall were there, they'd move back.

Though if we wait much longer, they won't bother, all the ones who remember actually making a living in a central shopping area will be long gone. The only reason so many have any bricks and mortar store is that many suppliers still won't allow a whole sale account to stores without a bricks and mortar store!

As for free parking, no one says it has to be all day free parking, just make it free for the first 2 or 3 hours, pay on exit from the carpark then start charging for hour four, more four hours 5+ ... very few people want to be trundling around town that long but it will stop those wanting to mooch free parking to go to work or get on the train to work.

If someone wants to drive and do things by car, why wouuld they go to a town center, seriously?

Even if towns go out of their way to "try" to make town centers as car-friendly as possible, they are at best going to be a poor-imitation second-best to shopping centers, in terms of car friendliness.

Out-of-town shopping centers inherently have far more space, because of their locations; this means that they will always be able to beat town centers in terms of offering free, easy parking and massive roads that don't get clogged with traffic, and they also have enough space to create pedestrian-only spaces inside, where shoppers are shielded from the cars.

So, I can either crawl through busy traffic and fight for a parking space at a town center (there will literally never be enough, no matter what town centers do) and then spend my shopping-time being assaulted by car fumes, car engine noise, and anxiously plucking my child out of the way of vehicles....

....Or, I can simply drive to an out of town shopping center, enabling me to proceed smoothly along spacious roads, park easily with tons of extra space, and then have a nice car-free shopping experience indoors where my child can run freely?

Who in their right mind is ever going to choose the first option?

I think we should allow urban areas to be urban, and allow suburban/rural areas to be surburban/rural.

Fill city centers up with loads of housing (townhouses and apartments), the way you see in Tokyo or Barcelona; keep the cars (mostly) out, and have town centers as nice minimal-traffic places where people can enjoy the urban experience of wandering on foot and people-watching as they shop and get lunches and coffees.

For those who want to drive, or perhaps find it hard not to go places by car because they have mobility issues which make walking tough but don't stop them from driving safely, out-of-town shopping centers should be maintained and are the perfect shopping solution for those who want or need a more car-centric lifestyle.

Right now, the UK urgently needs to build shitloads of housing. Understandably, there is reluctance to build on green fields and meadows. But if you are going to focus on building lots of housing on brownfield sites in-town, we need to accept that the cars need to be heavily restricted in these builtup areas, because it isn't fair to expect people to live in a traffic thoroughfare for suburbanites' cars, and all these people packed into city centers are not going to be able to own their own cars in the majority of cases as there simply will not be room.

Exactly - if we want to do the whole brownfield-first thing (which is basically the only way if we don't want one hell of a lot of meadows to disappear), it's vital to build on brownfield space. But that means:

a) the car parks will mostly disappear (they are one of the most tempting sites for developers wanting to build flats)
b) new residents who don't have much access to private cars will want the streets clearer and safer so they can bike
c) they will also want more bus gates (or trams), so buses and cycle lanes inevitably start to take up more road space/trams get in the way of the cars
d) as they live in apartments or have tiny gardens, they will want nice walkable neighborhoods so they can enjoy it as their outdoor space

The good news is that once you have a certain population density in the middle of cities, it because economically feasible to develop better public transport, because the urban users (who use PT a lot for short journeys) pay a lot of fares which subsidize the unprofitable parts of the lines that extend into the suburbs, so suburbanites can get into the center more easily. A big reason why the UK has never succeeded in developing proper public transport outside London is because most British cities are like doughnuts, with relatively few people living in the urban core.

I don't think free parking will solve the problems in most town centres. The reality is that the old concept of high street shopping is gone with the onset of internet shopping. There needs to be heavy investment in parks, piazzas, local theatres, swimming pools, local markets etc to bring back a sense of community and pride to towns. Governments need to support small independent business - like greengrocers, butchers, tailors etc, which is not existent today.

Even when all this, good politicians in councils are essential.

I live in a small suburb in the Blue Mountains in Sydney and have seen Sydney CBD go downhill since Covid. It's clean with lots to do but it doesn't offer what people want today and people are staying away when they finish work. The opposite is where I live where hundreds of small independent business opened since Covid and we are flourishing. It helps having a great council with a no nonsense major who is always open to talk with everyone and listen to suggestions, beginning with being able to call the council and be answered by a person and not a pre-recording message.

People want more trees, more parks, better quality food instead of the crap supermarkets often offer and generally better quality of life in their towns. But to bring these changes and revitalise town centres money is essential and governments need to invest heavily and too often they don't want to do it.

The last thing city centres need is more cars. However, there has to be a decent alternative.

They need to re think what centres look like, not be reliant on shopping. So a museum, library, soft play, trampoline park, playground , coffee shops, cinema,, theatre, mini golf, plus some food/clothes shops, eateries. Stuff that draws people in.
Ideally council buildings , job centre etc in a separate area, ditto the drinking scene.

Our town centre has a massive shopping centre (not well utilised) a load of vape/bargain/pawn shops. A market. (Bit of a relic) Then there's a load of run down buildings mostly closed with the odd random cafe , pub or hairdressers. And at the other side of town there is a cinema, theatre, and council buildings, job centre. It would work better with one central hub.

But we have an outlet close to us that is a combination of shopping/eating/kids entertainment plus free parking and that is very popular.

This ^

we used to have free on street parking for 2 hours but nobody checking it. There was never anywhere to park, as people parked all day. they introduced on street parking charges - suddenly there was plenty of space to park.

the bus is £2 to town, or £2 to the nearest big city 10 miles away. It’s cheaper to go by bus. If it was free parking there’d never be anywhere to park - so easier to go by bus.

would you make the bus free? Otherwise you’d be discriminating against those that don’t drive ( 33% don’t drive)

Parking may be a factor but the real killer is Amazon and to a lesser extent other online retailers. Town centre shops, especially independents, simply cannot compete with businesses that don't have to pay rent or, in the case of Amazon, normal tax liabilities.
If you really want to keep your town centre alive you have to bite the bullet on the parking front and go and support your local shops.
And as far as the parking is concerned, I'm not sure who would subsidize your £10 NCP ticket. The council couldn't afford to and I can't see NCPs magically waiving their fees. So it's a nice idea but impractical.

Or, I can simply drive to an out of town shopping center, enabling me to proceed smoothly along spacious roads, park easily with tons of extra space, and then have a nice car-free shopping experience indoors where my child can run freely?

our out of town shopping center is smooth, it’s congested throughout the week days and gridlock at weekends. Constantly posts on SM saying it’s 45 minutes to get out of the car park on a midweek day.

I’ve seen others, Bristol and Trafford center where queues are in the motorway & dusty cuffs in the car park

True, even shopping centers can suffer from congested roads! But ultimately, city centers are always going to be far more congestion-prone because there simply isn't very much room for roads and parking.

I think shopping centers can be nice, and play a genuinely useful role for those who have difficulty going anywhere except by car. I just think we should also cater for those who prefer a more urban lifestyle, by building lots of housing there and restricting the cars. And then everyone can have what they want and be happy.

I live in an apartment block in an urban center (not in the UK) and I use my local city center shops every day. I think I use them a lot more than a suburbanite who says "I'll drive in and shop if you give me free parking" but in practice only does this occasionally even if you do give them the damn free parking, because they mostly just shop in garden centers and shopping centers and Amazon anyway....