Amanda Taylor

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Impact of Park and Ride parking charges on Queen Edith’s residents

by admin on 9 February, 2017

Here is my statement to the County Council’s Economy & Environment Committee on Park & Ride parking charges:

I fully support the withdrawal of the Park & Ride parking charges. They have reduced usage of the P&R sites. Not only have optimistic income predictions been proved illusory, but the bus ridership has suffered and parking has been displaced to residential areas in the vicinity of the Park & Ride sites.

Cabinet’s expectation was that motorists might avoid the charges initially but then realize that Park & Ride was cheaper than city centre car parks. This was a false prediction: what actually happens in Queen Edith’s is that the motorists avoiding the charges at Babraham Road either take the P&R bus or, more frequently, take one of the numerous bus services operating in Hills Road or from the Addenbrooke’s bus station. They leave their cars in residential streets.

Commuter parking is a huge problem in Queen Edith’s due to several traffic generators: the Biomedical Campus, Homerton College, a Leisure Park and two sixth-form colleges. We need commuters’ vehicles to be in the Park & Ride sites, not parked in local streets, or worse, on local pavements.

   1 Comment

One Response

  1. Peter says:

    Amanda,
    This is not fully thought through and may have been discussed elsewhere but a couple of thoughts have been resonating with us for a while on P&R (as local residents in the centre of Cambridge, sometimes affected by parking):

    What is the actual cost of collecting revenue for P&R parking and/or bus journey?

    Other than perhaps a need to record numbers and potentially manage volume would making the whole thing free work – funding of the service from advertising, local businesses, other sources?

    It feels that P&R Car park charging introduce complexity and time delays for visitors and occasional users, both disincentives for future use.

    A more integrated approach to public transport, across and around Cambridge would likely reduce the prevalence of single occupancy vehicles. Stationary traffic at peak times in a number of areas is significant, adding to air pollution as well as journey times.

    I do wonder if a few controlled experiments might work; for example free P&R for a week?

    regards

    Peter Danson

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