Forum Topic

A fundamental flaw in Hounslow's Parking Strategy

If you look at the two documents that the council is currently consulting in it is hard not to be taken aback by the difference between the rhetoric and the reality.While it is a perfectly laudable aim to discourage car use and encourage sustainable transport measures, this is hard to achieve if you have a huge vested interest in encouraging people to drive which Hounslow does because it operates the largest number of car parking spaces in the borough.These are concentrated in the Hounslow town area which is also very well provided with privately run car parks so there would be a limited impact if the council were to get out of the car park business and bring much needed funds to its coffers by selling the sites for development.However, the 'strategy' is to upgrade the existing car parks and provide more when they deem demand requires it.The kerbside strategy on the other hand is to squeeze space even further with more parklets, EV chargers, bike hangers and cycle lanes. All of these are laudable, and some may even be necessary, but the report acknowledges that there are already parts of the borough where demand for residential spaces already outweighs supply.This includes Chiswick which already has the lowest level of daily car usage and pays more that the rest of the borough put together in permit charges. Chiswick's main car park at Sainsbury's is under continued threat of development and even that provides a fraction of the space available if you want to park in Hounslow. Squeezing further the limited available space will achieve almost nothing in encouraging people to switch modes of transport but will further reduce footfall on the High Road.

Jeremy Parkinson ● 1094d20 Comments

You are not wrong but like so many of these things the imperative for the council is financial rather than loftier aims about encouraging people not to drive. They were bringing in about £6,000,000 a year from these car parks and selling them would remove a key income stream even if it made broader sense financially.The other fundamental flow in this strategy is that, in its effort to be seen on message regard the environment, it is ignoring practical challenges with regard to parking that we are going to be facing over the next decade.Despite the government's announcement yesterday, there is going to be a massive shift to EVs. The council appears set to facilitate this by increasing the number of charging spaces in residential areas but, for a period at least, this will mean that residents with non-EVs will be squeezed out of scarce parking spaces. With a high number of streets with terraced properties and no space for off street parking, the council needs to consider its approach. Do they for instance allow people to charge from a lead strung across the pavement from their property or do they convert as many lampposts as possible into charging stations.If they want to bring car ownership and usage down perhaps the most effective way would be to not facilitate EV ownership. It is afterall, a policy which at the moment uses public money primarily for the benefit of the wealthy.

Francis Rowe ● 1094d

Really good points by Jeremy and Francis.

Basil Finnis ● 1094d

Not really. Just the usual discharge from the local carbrain sock puppets trying to put some structure of reasonableness around their dismay at ongoing challenges to the supremacy of the car in the Borough. The idea that continuing to run some car parks fatally undermines efforts to reduce the total domination of cars on kerbsides in the Borough is akin to the remaining Onesies arguing that drivers shouldn't be allowed to campaign for dedicated cycle infrastructure. They just reveal how hard they find it to oppose pragmatic people successfully driving necessary change to how we use and apportion public space.

Paul Campbell ● 1094d

"...carbrain sock puppets..."I suppose that is yet another example of Humpty using words to mean just what he chooses them to mean — neither more nor less. The Velomaniacs must be desperate to let him keep posting, given the damage he does to their cause.

Richard Greenhough ● 1094d

Paul, your argument is so cogent and internally consistent that I am now convinced by your view that the way Hounslow Council can reduce car use is expanding their portfolio of car parks as the need arises.

Jeremy Parkinson ● 1094d

Use your real name if you want an intelligent conversation ....The way Hounslow Council can reduce car use is by implementing all the measures they are proposing and retaining flexibility to enable parking in town centres where it is required is a pragmatic measure that detracts fractionally from the whole while frustrating the car lobby who would like to paint them as capricious thoughtless zealots.

Paul Campbell ● 1094d

Well said Paul. I particularly like the idea that car parks are a pragmatic measure that have little overall impact. Why don't Hounslow really stick it to the car lobby by building a multi-storey in Chiswick like they allowed to happen in Brentford?

Francis Rowe ● 1094d

Is there a difference between building a new multi-storey car park in Chiswick and maintaining flexibility for use of existing car parks in Hounslow? Would you like it if they did that? And would you like it enough to use your real name to endorse it on this platform that you and many others have been abusing by using fake accounts for a very long time to push Conservative and conservative propaganda to people who thought this was a community forum?

Paul Campbell ● 1094d

Humpty seems to be getting paranoia about what he thinks are false names. Seems to be a problem among the Velomaniacs.

Richard Greenhough ● 1094d

How dare you say Mr Campbell is a velomaniac! He is part of the Evil Car Park Lobby.For the rest of us, the question remains unanswered as to how you manage kerbside space during the transition to EV. Think about it this way, if you anticipate that around 50% of cars in the area will be EVs in five years time and therefore designate the required number of parking spaces as charging stations either purpose built or on lampposts and don't allow EV owners to charge from a lead strung across the pavement you will create a severe squeeze on space for non-EV cars. This is because if an EV doesn't need to charge , the owner will park it in a non-EV space therefore the EV spaces will be vacant but ICE owners will have nowhere to park. I'm not saying that this is an easy problem to solve but the council seems to thing it is a positive because they believe if people are having trouble parking they will choose not to own a car. The reality most people don't really have that choice.

Francis Rowe ● 1093d

One day Hounslow Council will make a sensible decision where Chiswick and non cycling is involved. Not sadly while the cycle lobby control the borough. They are appeasing a selfish minority, which is not how a Council is supposed to act, regardless of how they miraculously get voted in. Fortunately another Council is removing LTNs having realised they were a mistake.

Maggie Dodge ● 1093d

Both you and Paul have in common that you are determined to make every issue about cycling. In this case it has relatively little to do with the matter. The council might want to use kerbside space to put in bike hangers but that is fair enough if there is demand for it particularly in terraced streets where people have difficulty storing bikes. Even then the number of spaces required is unlikely to be material overall.The issue here is a failure to consider the looming issues with kerbside space in densely populated areas of London like Chiswick and a failure to think about workable strategies to manage the issue. This is a failure shared by you, Paul and the council.If we get to a situation in the next few years in which it is impractical to own a car unless it is an EV, that will have a profoundly negative impact for Chiswick in terms of social diversity.

Francis Rowe ● 1093d

There is little point in replying to somebody using a fake account to insult people using their real names on a community forum.But I will say that the you are using your anonymity to completely misrepresent my position. The whole point of the consultation and development of the kerbside strategy is to develop a plan for the competing interests for kerbside space.Frankly ICE vehicles being gradually squeezed off the roads over time is likely to be a desirable outcome from this work. Darwinism.

Paul Campbell ● 1093d

Frankly everyone might as well keep their powder dry. No matter what plans might be hatched in Hounslow House for dealing with an electric future, until we have a National Grid capable of supplying anything like the number of charging points that will be required in an EV future, let alone heat pumps, it's all wasted effort. If ever there was a cart to put before a horse.

Bruce Hammal ● 1093d

The world has had Bruces arguing that technological progress is pointless and futile for thousands of years. We'd still be eating raw meat in caves if anybody listened to the Bruces.

Paul Campbell ● 1093d

I don't know much about capacity issues but I did read that server farms were a bigger challenge to capacity than EV demand. We are already at 16% of new cars bought nationally being EVs and it is reasonable to assume in relatively well off Chiswick this is now between 20-25%. If this trend continues, Francis isn't being premature by anticipating the mix is going to be 50-50 before the end of the decade. The hope would be that the price premium for EVs reduces but, if it doesn't, Hounslow Council have to consider whether buy in for net zero policies will be undermined by a growing conviction that they favour the middle class.

Jeremy Parkinson ● 1093d

I don't know why you insist on trivialising and personalising every debate, it does you no credit. I realise (and you will be delighted to know) that the future isn't mine to own. However a realistic appraisal of where we are now is essential if we're to plan where we want to go next. If you can find a moment in your busy day insulting people, watch this. And stop shooting the messenger.https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0fzlswg/what-they-really-mean-for-you-series-1-1-electric-cars

Bruce Hammal ● 1093d

Bruce, your only contribution to discussions on climate change and the response of humanity is to say that we are doomed, we have no agency in our future and so there is no point in doing anything so we should just be happy and keep doing what we do now. That makes you a stereotype familiar through the ages and much more capably caricatured by the likes of Chaucer, Moliere and Shakespeare. I am not the first and I won't be the last to poke fun at dour luddite nihilists.

Paul Campbell ● 1093d

See you on the ice-floe with the last polar bear!

Bruce Hammal ● 1093d

It's no good, Bruce, the Velomaniacs regularly demonstrate that they have no sense of humour, so your merry quips are wasted on them.

Richard Greenhough ● 1093d