The High Cost of Free Parking

[Athos]

Bonkers

"The conclusion of The High Cost of Free Parking realistically anticipates the righteous resistance of motorists accustomed to free parking"

"Bonkers people with bonkers ideas don't know they are bonkers (and their ideas are bonkers) because they're bonkers."

 

[teuchter]

Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury et al will do this with your weekly shop for about a fiver and most people will save the fiver as they won't make any 'whim' purchases.

Also as each van delivers about eight peoples shopping that's one van and eight less cars. Because of economies of scale your local shop couldn't do deliveries for that price.

I have to admit I don't know much about these delivery services: how much they cost, is there a minimum spend, do they really deliver anywhere or only to urban areas?

Anyway, in principle yes, I think it's a good system: you buy your weekly shopping this way, which means you don't need a car for shopping. If it is a realistic option, then one less excuse for rural (or at least semi rural and suburban) dwellers to complain about how they just can't survive without a car.

Local shops can still have a role to play in providing the odd items you need more regularly or at short notice (albeit at a slightly higher price). In a system with lower car ownership these kinds of shops will be viable and will function just like they do in properly urban areas.

So, thinking about it yes, online supermarket shopping with home delivery is probably a realistic way forward, and would become a more popular option if we up the costs of private motoring.

 

[untethered]

There is one solution - anyone volunteering to be culled ?

These people are volunteering not to breed:

http://www.vhemt.org/

 

[Cobbles]

"So, thinking about it yes, online supermarket shopping with home delivery is probably a realistic way forward, and would become a more popular option if we up the costs of private motoring.

Who's the "we" in the context of upping the costs of private motoring?

No politician's going to stand on a platform of that nature - they realise that that's a sure route to having to work for a living.

 

[stavros]

One thing to be said for local independent shops, which I don't think I've read yet on this thread, is that they keep more money within the community, thus likely to cause an overall economic benefit to that community. Supermarket money goes largely to faceless shareholders, and as the Guardian showed with Tesco earlier this year to offshore tax havens.

 

[moose]

did we all starve before supermarkets were invented? Or did we just not have the opportunity to buy out-of-season foods, 200 different types of bread and £5.99 jeans?

No, the women who were staying at home rearing children had time to trawl round umpteen different shops, nattering with the shopkeepers, and slave over a stove half the day to make imaginative meals from the same old ingredients whilst the menfolk were out earning the money to pay for it. You simply can't compare then with now.

 

[roryer]

This image is a good example of inefficient land use in a car dependent society. The space used for offices is dwarfed by the space needed for staff parking.

 

[internetstalker]

I'm not singling you out here, but I always find the "By I've got a big family" argument a little hard to stomach. Ultimately, having kids is your choice, and by making that choice you've knowingly chosen to take on the extra costs that come with supporting an extra human life. We come back to the environment issue that few, even in green charities, will speak about; global overpopulation, ie. not immigration.

As for charging for all parking, whilst I don't drive I always pick up from the general populus the aggrievement that "this is just a money-making exercise". Thus it's my feeling that any scheme has to provide a carrot as well as a stick. I used to work at an out-of-town office which was ungettable to by public transport, and my employers had an excellent transport reward scheme where you got a small bonus each month if you racked up enough points from
car-sharing or cycling.

not when 3 of your kids are step kids

 

[stavros]

not when 3 of your kids are step kids

Granted, but you did chose to enter into a relationship with one of their parents.

 

[Lemon Eddy]

Interesting book review below.

IMO There should be no free parking on any pubic road in the UK. Residential Parking permits should be a miniumum of £1000 per annum, try to rent a space in a commercial car park for a year for less than that.

Workplaces should charge employees at least £5 per day per space. (Nottingham's workplace parking levy is the first attempt to do this, based on the principle that if a workplace provides parking then cars will travel at peak hours on local authority funded roads to fill them).

We need to extend this principle to supermarkets, only giving planning permission for PAID parking lots at a realistic rate of £2 per hour. Then driving to the supermarket will no longer be better value than walking to the local shops, and we can stop the hollowing out of town centre high streets. (Labour promised to do this, but then gave into pressure from the supermarkets)[/url]

Putting aside for one minute Roryer's rather loon-like tendencies, I don't see anything wrong with what he's proposing.

As already mentioned, all of the big supermarkets do home delivery now. I started using this a while ago purely out of laziness and to save time, and it works well. As one delivery van can do 20 - 30 deliveries, that's a large number of cars off the road. It also means you tend to waste less food, as you can plan out your weeks shopping in terms of food that can be used as leftovers or ingredients for other recipies.

Encouraging people to not drive to work is also a rather obvious tactic for reducing traffic on the roads. Not sure how you could do this in a way that was fair though to companies whose employees need to be able to drive around with work vans and the like* without giving huge loopholes that others could exploit.



* because honestly it's hard enough getting a plumber on time without them having the excuse "I'm going to get the bus back to the yard, I need a different type of washer"

 

[bigbry]

I have to admit I don't know much about these delivery services: how much they cost, is there a minimum spend, do they really deliver anywhere or only to urban areas?

Anyway, in principle yes, I think it's a good system: you buy your weekly shopping this way, which means you don't need a car for shopping. If it is a realistic option, then one less excuse for rural (or at least semi rural and suburban) dwellers to complain about how they just can't survive without a car.

Local shops can still have a role to play in providing the odd items you need more regularly or at short notice (albeit at a slightly higher price). In a system with lower car ownership these kinds of shops will be viable and will function just like they do in properly urban areas.

So, thinking about it yes, online supermarket shopping with home delivery is probably a realistic way forward, and would become a more popular option if we up the costs of private motoring.

I asked the Tesco driver this morning how many he delivers - 12 peoples shopping on his van. The price varies around the £5-6 depending when you want it - peak Thursday - Saturday morning or off-peak eg. Monday evening.

I asked my other half who is a shopping picker in Tesco and she says that there is no minimum as far as she is aware - she remembers some guy who just had two cases of lager delivered around the time of the last World Cup.

In the store she picks up to four peoples shopping on the same trolley - she gets some harrased shoppers complaining about her trolley being in their way. She usually says (very politely) if I wasn't here there'd be four people with their trolleys which is similar to the way bus travel is always sold as taking cars off the road.

 

[internetstalker]

Granted, but you did chose to enter into a relationship with one of their parents.

we don't choose who we fall in love with

 

[Giles]

How much is your f'ing car tax? How much is the PUBLIC land used for the highways you drive on FOR FREE worth? How much does it cost to maintain them?

Then we move onto YOUR FREE parking spaces on OUR land you think you have some god given right to use.

We subsidise you to park, all I want is parking to be paid at the value of the land you use. About £1000 per annum for a residential parking permit seems cheap to me.

"Our" land? If you mean the streets, they belong to everyone - car owners included, so we can all use them as we wish.

Giles..

 

[Giles]

Very true. I suspect that the slower we act, the messier it will be as change is forced upon us, ready or not.



I think it's important to challenge the default assumption that urban development should include (free) parking. There's an enormous opportunity cost to using land thus. Not allocating so much land for parking would enable urban areas to be built at higher densities, thus increasing the viability of public transport, walking and cycling.

The thing is, people in the UK don't want to live in high-density flats, for the most part. The current government have encouraged the building of ever more city centre apartments, and very few people have actually bought them to live in themselves.

Most people, given a choice, seem to want the traditional suburban house with garden, driveway and maybe a garage.

If enough people want something, then that's what they will get, because they have a vote.

People won't choose to live in high-density urban developments if you give them a choice. But people are entitled to be given a choice, aren't they?

Giles..