Letters / Enforcement would ease parking difficulties
I read Chris Cope’s story about the parking “free for all” in Lerwick with interest and a touch of nostalgia, as I was involved in the introduction of the disc parking scheme. I’d seen similar schemes in operation in Yorkshire and Tórshavn, and the idea seemed a good fit for Lerwick.
Councillor believes parking in Lerwick has become a ‘free for all’
Notwithstanding the Lerwick Port Authority’s introduction of pay-and-display parking, we were reluctant to go down that route for the Esplanade and Fort Charlotte areas.
The object was to offer many more parking opportunities for those visiting the town centre. By limiting stays to 45 minutes on the Esplanade, we knew that a space occupied by one car for anything up to 8 hours a day could accommodate around ten times as many vehicles over that period. Below the Fort, with a two-hour limit, we could expect to create four times as many daytime spaces. All of this was linked to other efforts to maintain the vitality of the town centre.
However, the scheme – like any form of parking control – depended on enforcement, and when the post of traffic warden was discontinued, fewer people stuck to the rules, and nowadays a disc on a dashboard is a rare sight.
The absence of a warden also means that yellow lines are largely ignored except when an obstruction is serious enough to interest the police. During discussions years ago, I remember a councillor remarking that “fokk in Lerwick dunna ‘park’ – they just get oot”. He wasn’t wrong.
If the council wants to end the ‘free for all’ in terms of spaces, there are really only two options. One is to retain the disc system, which I think has real merits: simplicity for users, easy enforcement, minimal investment and no reliance on technology.
The other is to adopt some version of pay parking, most likely offering the options of pay-and-display or pay by app such as RingGo. That would enable the council to recover at least some of the costs of enforcement. However, there’s a delicate balance to be struck between freeing up spaces and deterring people from parking. When we took the disc route, it was in part to avoid that dilemma and the associated risk to the town centre, then in a more fragile state than it is now.
As an aside, though, perhaps there’s a need for perspective. Those of us who spend time trying to find a parking space elsewhere in the UK quickly realise that it’s often harder than it is in Lerwick, and almost always far more expensive. I don’t want to tempt fate, or rather the Lerwick Port Authority, but an hour in central Edinburgh costs more than eight times as much as it does on Victoria Pier.
My own view is that the disc system remains the best solution for Lerwick.
Enforcement of it, and of parking on yellow lines, would greatly ease the difficulties, which – most of the time – stem from the way spaces are used rather than the absolute numbers available.
Alastair Hamilton
Burra
