Westminster considers ‘easyJet’-style parking fees

[robert.saunders]

A novel parking scheme based on the business principles behind low-cost budget airlines could be introduced in central London.

Westminster City Council is examining plans for an ‘easyJet’-style parking scheme where ticket prices would increase as the number of empty spaces declines. Motorists who arrive when a car park is empty could pay as little as 50p an hour or £3.99 a day, with prices increasing to a maximum £3.50 an hour and £33 a day.

This compares with the current average cost of £20 a day and £4 an hour in the West End. However, unlike booking flights, motorists would not have the luxury of booking in advance. The price to park would be advertised by a large digital sign at the entrance of the car park, and would vary regularly during busy periods of the day.

Parking consultant, Ian Betts, has questioned whether motorists would take the risk, given the uncertainties involved. ‘We can’t equate it to how easyJet operates. Motorists wouldn’t be able to book a cheap ticket in advance if they planned a shopping trip in a few weeks time. It’s more of a lottery, and people often don’t like uncertainty,’ he told Surveyor.

He also questioned the impact it would have on congestion. However, a Westminster spokesman said the council was not aiming to increase the number of motorists coming into central London, but encourage existing drivers to use its car parks instead of its competitors’. He said Westminster had seen a 12% drop in cars parking in the council’s car parks since the western expansion of the congestion zone earlier this year, and was keen to boost revenue.

The council is considering whether to trial the scheme in Knightsbridge early next year and, if a three-month pilot proves successful, the charging system could be rolled out across the rest of Westminster by the end of the year.

Cllr Danny Chalkley, Westminster’s cabinet member for economic development and transportation, said: ‘We know many drivers in London are put off by expensive parking charges. ‘This new way of charging will allow us to reduce prices by encouraging more people to park in our car parks.’

A decision is likely to be made this autumn.

http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=58178

 

[miro]

There is only one thing missing from that equation. If you park your car with insufficient payment or stay longer then the fine should be regulated according to demand also.

I am not satisfied that a nearly empty street should have a parking fine the same as when spaces are truly in demand (base penalty plus ticket processing fee).

Once that concept is passed through then I feel that parking regulation does indeed reflect parking costs and that the fee for processing an oversight in parking metering is not unlike any other service fee provided for "topping up" your stay in a space. You could under this scheme expect that you would keep getting fines if your parking kept running out.

The additional funds raised by fines would cover the cost of regulation and also provide the councils with the parking revenue they would have collected. I find that the cost of processing tickets or random fine values suggests an arbitrary and inefficient system. To most people that would seem far closer to plucking prices out of the air rather than actual regulation. Perhaps if the fine were broken down into fee structures it would be more transparent. At least I want to know that my fine is 15% for parking and 85% for processing. The enforced 15% would still be tax deductable as my parking fee.

We could expect then that the regulation would only take place at the busiest times because the price of parking would be the highest and any shortfall in your metering would be calculated at the prevailing (peak) rate. That would also mean there would be no sense in chasing parking infringements at the dead of night or crack of dawn because the price value and availability of the parking would be low value. That makes sense to everyone and how they get away with penalising one car in an empty street is a mystery.

Parking enforcement is a service to the community and like all services you charge for usage and human management. If the user fails to predict their parking duration correctly then it falls back on the councils to ensure that fair usage is applied to popular spaces.

I personally favour a "low impact" penalty system based on being issued with a cheap fine which can be paid with your mobile phone or repaid when you are about to leave the space and have stayed too long, thus adding peak value to your stay and a small management fee.

Universal systems benefit from being low cost and highly subscribed. There is no real way to avoid getting a parking fine once in your lifetime because of human factors and that makes the misery of the fine compounded with the discomfort of whatever caused you to be late in the first place. It seems that having a bad day is really measurable in dollars.

I take it that the proposed scheme applies to car parking structures where you get early bird discounts thus passing higher costs to people who have to visit take time off work, go to these areas in lunch hours and pay more for everything, whereas the all-day-parking public servants of the same district are satisfied that the lunch-time clients are funding the balance of their parking.