Parking is too cheap

Canyon48 wrote:

Parking in Bristol isn't cheap.

The gist of the vid is that it is - and it's right. Parking undervalues the land, and is an inefficient use of space. You might think it's a rip-off if you're charged, say, even a tenner to park in town. But if you wanted to hire a similar space, in a similar location, for a similar length of time, you'd pay many times more.

davel wrote:

Canyon48 wrote:

Parking in Bristol isn't cheap.

The gist of the vid is that it is - and it's right. Parking undervalues the land, and is an inefficient use of space. You might think it's a rip-off if you're charged, say, even a tenner to park in town. But if you wanted to hire a similar space, in a similar location, for a similar length of time, you'd pay many times more.

my view is that all private cars etc should be banned from town centres, and everything allowed in should be electric- or human/animal-powered only, so I'm not arguing with the general,point about cars being inefficient, but I'm not sure that it would be more to hire such a space. If you can think of examples I could be convinced. All I can think of is cafe terraces.

So imagine that cars etc have been banned, leaving no more than one lane of roadway in the town centre. The pavements have been widened and there are cafe terraces everywhere, and happy, mildly-pissed pedestrians walking out in front of all the athletic young cyclists in this artist's impression. How much does a cafe terrace licence cost?

Bugger all, seems to be the answer Google is giving. Far less than charging people to park in the same amount of space.

the upshot is, I'm not sure the cost argument works for on-street parking.

ConcordeCX wrote:

davel wrote:

Canyon48 wrote:

Parking in Bristol isn't cheap.

The gist of the vid is that it is - and it's right. Parking undervalues the land, and is an inefficient use of space. You might think it's a rip-off if you're charged, say, even a tenner to park in town. But if you wanted to hire a similar space, in a similar location, for a similar length of time, you'd pay many times more.

my view is that all private cars etc should be banned from town centres, and everything allowed in should be electric- or human/animal-powered only, so I'm not arguing with the general,point about cars being inefficient, but I'm not sure that it would be more to hire such a space. If you can think of examples I could be convinced. All I can think of is cafe terraces.

So imagine that cars etc have been banned, leaving no more than one lane of roadway in the town centre. The pavements have been widened and there are cafe terraces everywhere, and happy, mildly-pissed pedestrians walking out in front of all the athletic young cyclists in this artist's impression. How much does a cafe terrace licence cost?

Bugger all, seems to be the answer Google is giving. Far less than charging people to park in the same amount of space.

the upshot is, I'm not sure the cost argument works for on-street parking.

 

I'm thinking general square-footage costs, but if we're talking short-term use of the roadside, wouldn't the comparison be actually renting a car-sized table at the café (say a table for 6?)?

I know some friendly cafés, but none that would let me take up that space all day for the price of a couple of coffees. 

kil0ran wrote:

Fundamentally transport pricing is wrong across the board. Private car should not be the cheapest method for me to get from home to Waterloo at 9am, yet it is for the once or twice a month journeys I have to make. Bonkers.

The tipping point will have to be when more of us decide that we don't need a car.  The cost of a car is disproportionally fixed rather than variable.  Whether you drive alot or a little there is a fixed element of depreciation, insurance, VED, finance costs, MOT etc.  Once you have paid this the economics on a journey to drive become only fuel and the extra depreciation / wear and tear and parking , thus driving is cheap for an individual journey. 

I live in a household that runs two cars with three adults.  Neither car has a high mileage per annum, but I still have not got to the point where a single car feels desireable for the families lifestyle.   I will still leave my cars at home when I head into the city this coming Sunday with my wife, but that is the convenience the train will bring rather than economics of the journey.

What amazed me was the number of 17 year olds of my son's peer group that got a car when they turned 17.  We don't live in a particularly affluent neighbourhood, but it was still a surprise to people that I wouldn't even contemplate another car for the houshold.

I need to ask myself what the tipping point is for myself, considering I commuted by bike to work today, my wife walked to work and my son is away at University.  Tomorrow both cars will be used at the same time though.

Sniffer wrote:

kil0ran wrote:

Fundamentally transport pricing is wrong across the board. Private car should not be the cheapest method for me to get from home to Waterloo at 9am, yet it is for the once or twice a month journeys I have to make. Bonkers.

The tipping point will have to be when more of us decide that we don't need a car.  The cost of a car is disproportionally fixed rather than variable.  Whether you drive alot or a little there is a fixed element of depreciation, insurance, VED, finance costs, MOT etc.  Once you have paid this the economics on a journey to drive become only fuel and the extra depreciation / wear and tear and parking , thus driving is cheap for an individual journey. 

We run two cars on the bangernomics principle - bought cheap, don't maintain them beyond MOT requirements, parked on the drive. Fixed costs (ins/tax/MOT) are £500 each per year. Looked to go down to one car for environmental reasons but we'd easily spend more than £500 a year on public transport. The solution is an eCargo bike but we've nowhere secure to park £3ks-worth of bike, and can buy four replacement bangers for that price. Fixed costs need to increase substantially - make VED £1k per year per car and I'd take notice.

kil0ran wrote:

Fundamentally transport pricing is wrong across the board. Private car should not be the cheapest method for me to get from home to Waterloo at 9am, yet it is for the once or twice a month journeys I have to make. Bonkers.

For some journeys it's far cheaper in terms of fuel to go by car and by far the quickest. My car including everything used to cost me approx £800/yr for 3000-3500 miles per year, It's been in the garage a whole year now and some days I really wish I had it on the road because it's such a bind by public transport and/or simply much, much more expensive or even not possible to make a trip at all (Two young grandkids with bikes anywhere further away than home is not possible on a train in the UK)

A friend lives 37 miles away in Bucks, I live N.Herts, it's a mother trucker of a journey to cycle there and we would normally go out, have some beers, I sleep over and we go for a ride out Sunday. Honestly riding out on narrow in places, twisty high speed roads plus a major A road, not to mention fairly hilly isn't what I want to be doing before a night out on the lash. The alternate is to cycle the 1.8 miles into town, having paid £46 on an advanced ticket, go into KX, cut across to Euston, get off at Tring and cycle the 6.5 miles to his, it's just under 3 hours door to door. I've been once this last  12 months, we'd meet up about three times a year ordinarily.

I can drive to my 'home' city 155 miles away in 3 hours comfortably without breaking the speed limit, pay the toll on the bridge x2 and come back and it still cost me less than the train for a 75mile round trip. Ok it's an extreme example but sometimes the car is by far the best way to get to some places, I would still pay more to get to where I am going for the convenience but I'd been getting the train more often to see the family for a while and  SORN the car off the road for about 6 months a year. Too many journeys by train have been a horror story,

Still in two minds as to whether to put the car back on the road, but I'd rather invest in an pedal assist hybrid that I can stow a normal bike in or some luggage to take me on longer trips without need of train or a full sized car.

More train lines across the country would help but tthat's dcades away even if it were to happen, successive governments are in too deep with the motor industry to want to or even think they can change. we're fucked basically and EVs are not going to change shit excpt take up more space with all the additional charging points on streets everywhere.

kil0ran wrote:

Fundamentally transport pricing is wrong across the board. Private car should not be the cheapest method for me to get from home to Waterloo at 9am, yet it is for the once or twice a month journeys I have to make. Bonkers.

Totally agree. We run a car and probably do about 10k mile/year. Most local journeys are done by bike. The general exception is grocery shopping. I'm now planning on building a cargo-bike and electrifying it to reduce the number of short car journeys. Even building it myself it will take years to recoup the outlay but it's a lifestyle choice. What is worse is the lack of public transport options and their cost. I live in Harrogate. To go into the centre of town takes 10 minutes on a bike (more or less the same as by car depending on the traffic), 30 minutes on foot. If I choose to go by bus the return journey will cost me £7. How on earth are we going to get car drivers to choose the bus option? The cost of that journey by car once the fixed costs have been deducted - about 40p. There's lots of free parking not far from the centre of town and even if you choose to pay for on street parking or a multi storey car park it's not going to cost anything like the £7 for the bus. 

BTW most of the 10k miles we do in the car is longer journeys which are prohibitively expensive by train in comparasion to the current cost of running a car. 

Whilst it's clear that there are some enlightened local authorities most will not do anything to change the status quo. Taking on private car usage in this country is like taking on gun ownership in the US. 

We need a central government that is prepared to do something radical and tax private car usage properly and invest in public transport and cycling/walking intrastructure. I would be happy to see fuel tax doubled overnight if the revenue was spent on the above.

iandusud wrote:

kil0ran wrote:

Fundamentally transport pricing is wrong across the board. Private car should not be the cheapest method for me to get from home to Waterloo at 9am, yet it is for the once or twice a month journeys I have to make. Bonkers.

Totally agree. We run a car and probably do about 10k mile/year. Most local journeys are done by bike. The general exception is grocery shopping. I'm now planning on building a cargo-bike and electrifying it to reduce the number of short car journeys. Even building it myself it will take years to recoup the outlay but it's a lifestyle choice. What is worse is the lack of public transport options and their cost. I live in Harrogate. To go into the centre of town takes 10 minutes on a bike (more or less the same as by car depending on the traffic), 30 minutes on foot. If I choose to go by bus the return journey will cost me £7. How on earth are we going to get car drivers to choose the bus option? The cost of that journey by car once the fixed costs have been deducted - about 40p. There's lots of free parking not far from the centre of town and even if you choose to pay for on street parking or a multi storey car park it's not going to cost anything like the £7 for the bus. 

BTW most of the 10k miles we do in the car is longer journeys which are prohibitively expensive by train in comparasion to the current cost of running a car. 

Whilst it's clear that there are some enlightened local authorities most will not do anything to change the status quo. Taking on private car usage in this country is like taking on gun ownership in the US. 

We need a central government that is prepared to do something radical and tax private car usage properly and invest in public transport and cycling/walking intrastructure. I would be happy to see fuel tax doubled overnight if the revenue was spent on the above.

Regarding taxation of vehicles, sticking a few percentage points on fuel is only a short term measure. The problem (from a tax perspective) is that new generation cars use less fuel. And with electric cars increasing in number and possibly to dominate the market in a few years (even before IC cars are banned), that's not a long term solution. The answer is going to be road user charging. People will have to pay for the distance they drive, with higher charges for peak rates in cities and lower charges for off peak use in country areas and so on. 

The fact is that low mileage drivers and non drivers basically pay a lot for road infrastructure, and the high mileage drivers ride on the back of this. A lot of vehicle owners are complacent about their vehicle use too and simply won't consider an alternative. I've lost count of the times I've talked this over with colleagues and they simply don't want to get out of their cars, even hen it's costing them both time and money. One former colleague could easily have bought a bike, ridden to the station and take the train. But he preferred driving his car, despite the jams. And he even reasoned that he'd have to pay to buy a bike, and wouldn't listen to me pointing out that the bike would pay for itself quickly in terms of his reduce vehicle fuel costs. I also pointed out that his working day could then start on the train with his laptop, rather than sitting frustratedly in a queue of traffic.

OldRidgeback wrote:

iandusud wrote:

kil0ran wrote:

Fundamentally transport pricing is wrong across the board. Private car should not be the cheapest method for me to get from home to Waterloo at 9am, yet it is for the once or twice a month journeys I have to make. Bonkers.

Totally agree. We run a car and probably do about 10k mile/year. Most local journeys are done by bike. The general exception is grocery shopping. I'm now planning on building a cargo-bike and electrifying it to reduce the number of short car journeys. Even building it myself it will take years to recoup the outlay but it's a lifestyle choice. What is worse is the lack of public transport options and their cost. I live in Harrogate. To go into the centre of town takes 10 minutes on a bike (more or less the same as by car depending on the traffic), 30 minutes on foot. If I choose to go by bus the return journey will cost me £7. How on earth are we going to get car drivers to choose the bus option? The cost of that journey by car once the fixed costs have been deducted - about 40p. There's lots of free parking not far from the centre of town and even if you choose to pay for on street parking or a multi storey car park it's not going to cost anything like the £7 for the bus. 

BTW most of the 10k miles we do in the car is longer journeys which are prohibitively expensive by train in comparasion to the current cost of running a car. 

Whilst it's clear that there are some enlightened local authorities most will not do anything to change the status quo. Taking on private car usage in this country is like taking on gun ownership in the US. 

We need a central government that is prepared to do something radical and tax private car usage properly and invest in public transport and cycling/walking intrastructure. I would be happy to see fuel tax doubled overnight if the revenue was spent on the above.

 

Regarding taxation of vehicles, sticking a few percentage points on fuel is only a short term measure. The problem (from a tax perspective) is that new generation cars use less fuel. And with electric cars increasing in number and possibly to dominate the market in a few years (even before IC cars are banned), that's not a long term solution. The answer is going to be road user charging. People will have to pay for the distance they drive, with higher charges for peak rates in cities and lower charges for off peak use in country areas and so on. 

The fact is that low mileage drivers and non drivers basically pay a lot for road infrastructure, and the high mileage drivers ride on the back of this. A lot of vehicle owners are complacent about their vehicle use too and simply won't consider an alternative. I've lost count of the times I've talked this over with colleagues and they simply don't want to get out of their cars, even hen it's costing them both time and money. One former colleague could easily have bought a bike, ridden to the station and take the train. But he preferred driving his car, despite the jams. And he even reasoned that he'd have to pay to buy a bike, and wouldn't listen to me pointing out that the bike would pay for itself quickly in terms of his reduce vehicle fuel costs. I also pointed out that his working day could then start on the train with his laptop, rather than sitting frustratedly in a queue of traffic.

 

I agree with this approach.

The thing we have to watch, now we're in a convoluted system of taxing/charging earnings, spending and use, is that any charging has got to be in proportion to what is 'affordable'. Otherwise prohibitive charging only affects people who could no longer afford it, and the better-off just shrug it off (one of the massive failings of fixed-price tolls and congestion charges, IMO. Charging £11.50 per day to drive across London is a really blunt instrument, and only prohibits people who can't afford to pay it).

Road use charges need to be proportionate, not fixed, if we don't want to unfairly hammer the lower earners, lest the whole approach becomes a way of clearing roads of the oiks and car use becomes the preserve of the wealthy. It is possible - but I doubt there's much political will to make it happen. 

brooksby wrote:

everyone goes on about how expensive public transport is and it's not actually true.

Depends where you are. Shrewsbury bus services are not cheap.

Peripheral parking, outside the congested town centre, is £4 for 10 hours, less than a day bus ticket (though the P&R is £1.60 and a better service).

But of course

Windy Cyclist wrote:

That really is interesting, thank you Windy Cyclist!

Yes it was quite interesting, Windy Cyclist, have another pat on the back for linking it (you can stop patting yourself now).

Windy Cyclist wrote:

That really is interesting, thank you Windy Cyclist!

That really is interesting, thank you Windy Cyclist!