Steve Woods

On 1st April – April Fool’s Day – Bristol City Council’s Easton & St Philips Residents’ Parking Scheme comes into operation. (Some would consider the choice of date most apposite. Ed.)

This is just one of many Residents’ parking schemes being introduced by the council at the instigation of the autocratic elected Mayor, George Ferguson, the man in red trousers (posts passim).

Needless to say, the schemes haven’t exactly received universal support from the residents of a city with a high level of car ownership and an abysmal level of public transport provision. Overall, it’s been condemned by residents as a ‘parking tax’ as residents will have to acquire permits, both for their own vehicles, as well as for visitors arriving by motor vehicle.

There has been consultation, of course. However, as is usual with Bristol City Council, consultation is a portmanteau word, a crafty elision of ‘confidence trick’ and ‘insult’. With a city council consultation, the stress is always firmly on the first syllable. When something goes out to consultation, what the council wants to do is usually a fait accompli.

There have been howls of protest about the Residents’ Parking Schemes in the local press, particularly the car-loving Bristol Post, which has even enlisted the odd high-profile petrolhead to trash the Mayor’s plans.

As this post is being written, the streets of Easton are being prepared for the arrival of the new parking regime. New double yellow lines and parking bays marked on the streets. In addition, there’ll be parking charges for visitors and parking meters have started to make their appearance both on main thoroughfares like Stapleton Road and the backstreets.

Bristol’s residents’ parking schemes programme is very flawed.

One of the justifications for implementing them is to dissuade the thousands of daily commuters from outside the local authority area clogging up residential roads by parking there all day. As the scheme doesn’t cover the whole city, the thousands of commuting motorists will just park a bit further out in districts not covered by residents’ parking schemes, such as the area where your ‘umble scribe happens to live.

Where I live, it’s the residents that are guilty of problem parking; the streets are Victorian, narrow and were intended for use by horse and cart, not 21st century motor vehicles. Pavement parking is rife in the backstreets, making pavements impassable to wheelchair users and parents with children in prams and pushchairs. There’s minimal enforcement to combat such anti-social parking. Indeed, the police often contribute to the problem themselves (posts passim).

If Mayor Ferguson really wanted to stop Bristol being choked by out of town commuting motorists, his counterpart in London came up with an alternative that was introduced 11 years ago. It’s called the London Congestion Charge Zone.