Waning enthusiasm

A few reasons why I haven't been blogging lately.

Firstly, a letter to the Morpeth Herald got published, which rather took the righteous wind from my indignant sails; the raison d'etre of this blog being that the Herald is a supine mouthpiece for vested car-centrism, censoring alternative views in pursuit of a fawning, car-favouring agenda. Letter's here:

Sir,
with calls for 'free' parking a regular feature of your front page it might be even-handed of you to remind your readership that it costs to provide car parking.

How much it costs is moot. The Department for Transport in their “Essential Guide to Travel Planning” page 17, estimates the national average annual cost to the provider of a single car parking space to be around £400: “A study of 21 organisations with travel plans showed that their average annual spend on maintaining each space was £400”.

A Northumberland specific figure is more elusive. The total cost to the Council of providing free parking to car commuting staff county wide, divided by the number of spaces this gift comprises, would give us a reasonable yardstick. But the Council doesn't keep count. Even in times of eviscerating austerity this perk goes unaudited.

North Tyneside General Hospital does keep count. Actual and projected costs of providing their circa 1100 space car park for the five years 2004-9 give the average annual cost for a single space of £505.

Accepting £400 as a working figure, the Council's parking permit - access to all municipal car parks county wide, valid for a year, cost £110 (£82.50 concessionary) or £2.12 (£1.59) per week - represents an annual subsidy to the private motorist end-user of car parking in Morpeth of £290. Not enough?

Alternatively, we might take the cost of renting a wedge of central Morpeth hard standing for purposes other than storing heavy machinery, as our marker. The space required to park a single car would cost you circa £7,500 a year if instead you wanted to stand a market stall on it. You can park a car in central Morpeth for 68 years for what the same space would cost a stall holder for a year. The heart of even the most kvetching motorist must be warmed by being able to rent £7.5K worth of resource for £110.

Calls for 'free' parking are disingenuous. What's being demanded is that private motoring receive public subsidy, that non car users (which includes conscientious car owners who leave the car at home for journeys that allow active and sustainable alternatives) subsidise the habitual motorist, either through their Council Tax, through increased business rates manifesting as higher prices at the tills, or through cuts in public services.

Yours

Secondly, the week after this got an airing on their letters page, several column inches were given to reporting a local politician (Labour this time) raging against parking charges as a tax on motorists. So there seems no point contending with this sort of willed idiocy.

Finally, I'm not sure I'm very good at this. Consider:

We must undermine motorists’ current monopolisation of road space. We must fundamentally challenge motorists’ sense of entitlement to that space. We must pursue a radical programme of civilising motorised traffic. And if/where we’re not as a society prepared to do those things, we must build separate space for cycling.

Now I might, with a following wind, after a good night's sleep and a few livening micro-doses of EPO, be capable of writing something similar. But though sincere and strongly felt it would be in some sense hollow, would rest on emotion. For the author Dave Horton, whose excellent blog I urge you to follow, it's a conclusion that follows patient research, rigorous academic process, assiduous reflection, and is all the more persuasive for it.