Problems

Opportunities

Aims and Objectives

1. Reduce the environmental impact of travel and promote community health
2. By demand restraint, commuters will be encouraged onto sustainable transport modes
3. Improve safety and security for all who wish to travel. Those that need to use their car must be helped to feel safe by:
   • Improved lighting and security for vulnerable car users at all public car parks
4. Support an efficient and prosperous local economy with growth in appropriate areas
5. By providing short-stay parking for shoppers and tourists
6. By the provision of Park and Ride for commuters
7. Provide equality and accessibility for the whole community. Whilst introducing restraint measures for general and commuter traffic, minority groups should be catered for:
   • Provision for disabled motorists at public car parks
   • Supporting shopmobility
   • Providing on-street parking for disabled drivers

Strategies

Workplace Parking Levy and Road User Charging

The Councils will study the outcomes from the Workplace Parking Levy and Road User Charging pilots and trials, and their impacts on the test sites, but will not include the introduction of either the levy or charge in the life of this five-year Plan.

Parking Restraint Areas

Click for Parking Restraint Areas Map 5.5. (This will open in a new window.)

Parking Restraint Areas have been defined in which the needs of shoppers and visitors will have priority over the needs of commuters. There is a clear link with land-use policies, such as the restriction of employee parking in new development and the introduction of new Parking Restraint Areas. In and adjacent to Parking Restraint Areas, controls will be introduced for on-street parking. The following measures will be introduced where appropriate:

• Preferential residents parking schemes
• Pricing of on-street spaces
• Parking bans to provide for public transport, cycle or disabled facilities
• Time limits to discourage all-day parking

Pricing Strategy Parking charges can be an emotive subject with local residents and commuters, as well as being commercially very important for town centre retail outlets, leisure and tourism. In the conurbation, the town centre areas have mixed use development, with residential, commercial, leisure and tourism uses all competing for the same parking provision. Therefore the management of a pricing structure to discourage long-stay commuter journeys has to be sensitively balanced with the other important uses.

• Prices in local authority-controlled car parks will be adjusted to encourage use of the highway network during the times when there is sample spare capacity and discourage use at peak periods.
• In Parking Restraint Areas, the price of long-stay car parking will be gradually increased in real terms and the number of long-stay spaces will be reduced by converting them to short-stay.
• Revised pricing structures will be undertaken concurrently with improved public transport provision.
• The cost of car park season tickets will be increased above the inflation/cost of living increase, and the numbers of tickets issued will be limited.

Decriminalisation of Parking Enforcement

Parking controls and their enforcement are considered to play a major role in managing road space and achieving national integrated transport strategies. There are many concerns over the current limitations in enforcement and its consequent adverse effects on traffic management. Discussions are in-hand between all the authorities and the police in respect of decriminalisation of parking and the possibility of the Highway Authorities taking over control of parking enforcement if the traffic warden service is withdrawn in the future.

The dates targeted for implementation of decriminalisation are as follows:

The Joint Member Transport Policy Group will consider whether some activities offer cost savings through joint working, e.g. towing, storage, clamping, etc., and officers of the three authorities are to investigate potential for this further.

Land-Use Policies and Parking Guidelines

Parking guidelines for different types of new development are being revised to take into account their location and accessibility by other transport modes.

In practical application, these standards are similar to the accessibility based parking standards first used in the Netherlands and refined by some London boroughs. The basic concept is that the level of car parking provision for a particular type of land-use will be less in areas where accessibility by non-car modes is high. For areas where car use is the only practical option, large people-intensive developments will not be permitted and maximum parking standards will be set that are lower than have applied in the past.

Traditionally, each borough had adopted commuted payment policies that attract funds from developers to provide new public car parking. Increasingly, authorities are moving to a position where such funds are acquired not for car parking but for wider transportation proposals, such as the provision of cycle facilities, or to assist in the progression of Park and Ride schemes. The local plans for Bournemouth and Poole now contain clearly-defined parking restraint policies for the town centres.