I must apologise to everyone because I had assumed and then misled you all to believe that Anonymous lives in S1. This isn't the case. Anonymous lives in the Grange just outside of S1. I hope you will forgive me.
Of course, this is where all of the commuters and people from S1 (and maybe 7 and 8, too) who don't want to buy permits are hanging out.
Anonymous has promised me a follow up email which I will add to the bottom of this post when it arrives.
I hope I put our case reasonably well. I think the main point from my side was some kind of proof that we aren't going to overrun the quiet side of S1, the bit that Sciennes sits in and is now empty. Here's a sketch of my proof that doesn't require any statistics.
Two or three years ago, when my wife and I came back from the States, we didn't buy a permit immediately. We parked in what is now the empty, eastern bit of S1.
Now, during the day, it was impossible to find a space, I would drive around endlessly, hoping that someone would leave in front of me, letting me in. I would also notice that some people had their drives covered by the inconsiderate and other such unpleasantness.
At night, however, it was a different story altogether. Parking was trivial and immediate. I always ended up right on the edge of S1, within view of the Argyle pub, as close as possible to my own house. There were very few cars in that area at night.
The overflow from 7 and 8 (and possibly elsewhere) would have gone up there at night, just as I did. That overflow must have been bigger before than it would be now because back then the streets of 7 and 8 were only half full at night - everyone now would need a permit and having paid will prefer their own streets to having to use overflow.
So, this, I think, goes to show that if zones 7 and 8 were merged with S1, then the situation for S1 Sciennes would be better, night and day, than it used to be at night before S1.
Here's Anonymous' email:
Hugh,
Thank you for the time that you and Cameron Rose took yesterday to meet me and to explain your position. That has helped me to understand much better what it is that you are seeking. I have therefore set down in this e-mail what I understand to be the position and I hope that you will find it helpful to post this on your blog to see if it does accord with the wishes of the residents of Marchmont. I am sure that you will be the first to add your own comments after the posting below, to correct me if I have misunderstood and to put your proposals in your own perspective. I truly appreciate the open spirit in which you have invited me to contribute to your debate and I trust the discussion here will continue in a constructive manner that allows us all to see issues from each other’s perspective.
What does ‘good’ look like for residents’ parking in Marchmont and Zone S1?
- Zones 7, 8 and S1 will remain. You are not advocating a merger of these zones. Rather, residents of Marchmont (Z8) want the boundaries of S1 enlarged to incorporate all of Marchmont (the streets currently in Z8 and Z7 bounded by Whitehouse Loan, Melville Drive, Causewayside, Sciennes Road and Warrender Park Road). Thus S1 would be larger; Z8 and Z7 would be smaller than at present.
- Most of the pay-and-display bays in the Marchmont sections of the present Z8 will be converted into shared use, meaning that holders of residents’ permits will not be required to pay to park in them.
- You do not want the Council to stop selling new permits (i.e. to residents who do not currently have permits). Although you acknowledge the current S1 limits of two permits per dwelling, you do not want any other action to reduce demand for parking, such as a waiting list for new permits or any increase in the cost of the permits.
- You seek a ‘balance’ of parking density across the community, meaning that you do not consider it appropriate to take account of an individual street’s capacity for parking in determining the number of parking spaces that should be made available nearby for residents of that street. If there are spaces in adjacent streets, these should be used for parking by residents of the more crowded streets. It is the community as a whole that should be considered; it is divisive to let individual streets optimise their parking for their own exclusive benefit.
I hope that the above is consistent with your current proposals – albeit expressed in my words from the perspective of an outsider. I will be interested to see the degree of unanimity among contributors to your blog about whether this is indeed what you all seek.
An outsider’s perspective on these proposals
A) Setting the zone boundaries
It seems logical to set the boundaries of parking zones to align with natural boundaries, such as major roads or lines where the style of housing changes. By putting together groups of properties – say, tenemented flats and terraced housing – which have similar demands for parking, there will be a broad consensus between all residents in that zone about what is desirable. There will also be a stronger sense of a common purpose, in that one street’s gain is not another street’s loss. The current boundary between Z8 and S1 does appear arbitrary and I can see why residents of Warrender Park Road would feel a strong affinity with residents of, say, Arden Street. To the outsider, the streets have a similar look and feel of grand terraces. It is hard to understand why Arden Street should be in Zone S1 when Warrender Park Road is in Zone 8. In both cases I think it a crying shame that the roads look like car parks, diminishing the grand architecture of the area, but that is clearly what the residents of both roads want and their wishes should take precedence over mine.
I can therefore see why it seems logical to merge the Marchmont section of Zone S1 with the Marchmont sections of Zones 7 and 8, creating an area where residents share a common purpose of seeking to maximise the number of cars they can park on their streets. You told me that the number of spaces available in the Marchmont section of S1 is many more than the number needed to accommodate all the demand from Marchmont Zone 8 at present (if shared use is introduced to the pay-and-display bays) and therefore, after the proposed boundary changes, there should be no problem of anyone being unable to park near their home. I have not seen any data to support this assertion, in particular any data about the number of cars owned by residents of Marchmont (rather than the number of residents permits held by them) and it would greatly inform the debate if you could get such information. If you are right, then I can understand that it would be appropriate to bring all of the Marchmont streets, where on-street parking is needed, into the same zone.
I think it less likely, however, that residents of the roads with large family homes will take a similar view about welcoming Marchmont residents into the S1 family. Hatton Place and Tantallon Place are good examples. Those roads have been transformed with the introduction of S1. Their properties are very different from the properties just around the corner in Marchmont. They are large family homes with off-street parking. The roads had been solidly parked before but are now empty, showing that the residents do not want or need to park on their streets. I very much doubt that these residents will feel much affinity with the residents of Marchmont whose objective is to maximise the number of cars that can be parked on the streets.
I therefore suggest that it may be appropriate to subdivide S1 into sub-zones determined by the type of property in the road. The natural boundaries are the places where tenemented or terraced properties end and family homes with off-street parking begin. I understand that the focus of the debate will then become whether, in the interest of the wider community, those with the good fortune to live in the roads where residents do not need on-street parking should have residents from adjacent streets given any special dispensation to park there (i.e. unlimited parking for the price of a resident’s permit).
I therefore do not believe that you will find a common sense of purpose throughout the whole of the current S1 zone and the Marchmont areas of Z7 and Z8. The Council and our elected politicians will have to make that difficult decision about whether residents who do not need any on-street parking should be in the same controlled parking zone as residents whose objective will be to maximise the number of cars that can be parked on the streets of the zone. This is the element of ‘balanced use’ to which Cameron Rose referred in his deputation to the Council on 21 September 2006.
http://www.myedinburgh.org/channel/205/downloads/counciladdress0906.doc
In this, he notes that over 500 cars could be parked in Lauder Road. The implication is clearly that, as a single community, the burden of car parking should be spread more evenly throughout the area. The debate will be whether having Lauder Road empty is good or bad for residents as a whole. I set out my own views on this in my earlier posting. http://marchmontparking.blogspot.com/2006/11/concerns-from-s1.html
B) Reducing demand for parking and valuing the street environment
I understand that you do not believe that there should be any action to reduce the demand for parking from residents, even if the streets where they live do not have sufficient spaces. I had suggested that there are two ways in which this could be done:
- Through a waiting list. There could be a moratorium on new permits in an area (or sub-area of densely parked streets) until enough people had moved out to bring the number of permits down to the number of spaces available. That would guarantee residents a space on their own street. During the moratorium, new people moving into the area would know when they buy or rent the property that they will not get a resident’s permit and will therefore have to pay the pay-and-display rates until such time as they get a permit. They will take this into consideration when deciding whether to buy or rent the property. With a property turnover of, say, 20% (average five years residency), the current excess in Zone 8 could take up to two years to clear and the waiting list could become that long.
- By increasing the cost of the permit. The current £80 per year reflects the administrative cost of providing the permit; it bears no relationship to the value that those buying the permit place on it. Raising the price would reduce demand and there will be a price at which the number of permits will equal the number of spaces in each area without the need for any waiting list. Given the emptiness of the pay-and-display bays in S1, which cost £4.30 per day or £1,118 to park in every day for a year, I infer that the value of a parking place is currently less than £1,118 per year and raising the charge to something less than this would be sufficient to bring demand and supply back into balance.
However, you have dismissed both of these options. As I understand your position, you consider that residents – whether existing residents or new residents moving in – should be entitled to park their cars near to their properties for the cost of the administration of the permits. They should make no financial contribution to the community in return for preferential parking rights on the streets. Parking should be available on-street for any resident that requires it, close to his or her home, from the day they move in.
The approach you advocate does not allow those who do not need on-street parking – either because they do not own a car or because they have off-street parking - to place a value on the road space or the streetscape. You pointed out to me that the 1,225 residents’ permits currently issued in Zone 8, even though they are 62% more than the 755 residents’ spaces available, are still a small number by comparison with the number of dwellings in the zone. I infer that car owners are a minority in Zone 8. I would be unhappy if I were a non car owning resident of Zone 8, paying £2 per day to travel to work on the bus, to have residents’ cars dominating my home environment for the cost of just 31 pence per day (£80 per year). I would expect to get something in return for this loss of my environment and I would want the car owning residents to make a contribution to the community equal to the value to all residents of the road space.
Moreover, I believe that a combination of unrestricted issuing of permits at the current cost of £80 per year, together with a rezoning that makes more spaces available for Marchmont residents in a newly expanded S1, will lead to an increase in the number of cars in the area. People are currently discouraged from acquiring a car and moving into Marchmont because parking is difficult. If it becomes both easy and cheap, there will be no economic signal to constrain an increase in car ownership in the area. I am not persuaded that this is equitable for the car owning and non car owning residents of Marchmont and Zone 8.
My views on this extend beyond Marchmont to my own area of the Grange. Although you maintain that the cost of a resident’s permit should not exceed the administrative costs, we can observe a market price for parking on the streets of Zone S1. There is already plenty of parking available to all residents of Marchmont Zone 8 and S1. Most of the pay and display bays are empty in S1 for most of the day. There are many bays available for parking for the whole nine hours from 0830 to 1730 (e.g. in Lauder Road and Dick Place). These cost £4.30 per day and the meters allow a rollover, whereby if you arrive mid afternoon, you can buy nine hours of parking to take you through to mid afternoon the following day without moving the car.
The issue therefore is money, not parking space. Zone 8 residents are not willing to pay the £4.30 per day for guaranteed parking, rather than £80 per year for a resident’s permit in their overcrowded zone. I conclude that the present value of road space to car owners is less than £4.30 per day. If it is not worth that much to the residents of the present Zone 8 to be able to park in S1, it will appear inequitable to the residents of Hatton Place and Tantallon Place to be required to have cars parked in their streets for the cost of a resident’s permit, which at £80 per year is the equivalent of 31 pence per day. I suspect that the residents of Hatton Place would pay a lot more than £80 per year just to keep their roads empty if they were given the choice and that they therefore place a much higher value on the road space, probably closer to the £1,118 per year for pay-and-display parking. If a Marchmont resident can secure a road space for £80 to keep his car in, why cannot another resident secure road space for the same price and keep it empty? I certainly would pay more than £80 per year to have yellow lines painted the length of the street where I live. It is not evident to me why the “balance” to which Cameron Rose refers in his deputation to the Council should be in favour of car owners who need on-street parking and against non car owners and those residents with off-street parking who do value empty space in the roads and the amenity of a pleasant and safe streetscape. By keeping the cost of permits down below the evident market price for on-street parking, this creates a cross subsidy to those with residents’ permits from those who do not need on-street parking. I have not seen a persuasive case for this social redistribution of benefit.
Thank you for letting me express my views here, being an outsider on your blog for Marchmont residents. I will be very interested to see the reaction from residents near and far.
Yours truly,
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