Free car parks: When will they ever learn?
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I have recently been going into the town centre more often because of the attraction of free parking.
Today, the free car parks were full but the town centre was quieter than usual. I expect it is because more people are back in work and are parking all day.
What is the point of having free parking to support the town businesses if shoppers can’t park? All we are doing is subsidising workers parking which in a time of reduced finances is a complete waste of money. The same situation happens with all the free parking time periods. I wonder if the council will ever learn that a system is needed to ensure their scheme works and avoid it being abused. Alternatively, stop it and save money.
I don’t know how the pay and display machines work.
However, possibly getting a free ticket from the machine that expires after 2 hours might work. What needs to be avoided is office workers moving their cars at lunchtime to get a further half day of free.At the moment even the Waterways short stay Car park is being used without restrictions which doesn’t help the situation.
And why shouldn’t town centre workers benefit from free parking the same as anyone else?
Granted they should abide by the time restrictions imposed in the car parks as we all should.What the tone of this thread seems to intimate is that rather than there being no parking spaces available, it should read I had to walk a little further than I liked. Crescent Rd has throughout had numerous spaces available.
Don’t forget that workers make use of many of the shops during their lunch hour particularly, and many towns are crying out for office workers to return to their normal places of business to boost town centre trade.
Before anyone tries to play the blue badge holders card, despite all the furore regarding the loss of designated disabled parking when the Police moved to the library site, I have yet to see it used to anything more than half capacity.
….because it is meant to attract extra people to town rather than subsidise office workers? It doesn’t take a genius to understand the spirit of the scheme and what it is being abused!
Ideally all of the Waterworld and library car park would be short stay. In most towns the long stay car parks are typically out of the centre… lazy office workers in Wrexham?
Free parking is free parking, if it’s available and there’s no restrictions then you can’t complain. It’s no difference from unrestricted parking along the side of roads, just falls into the law of supply and demand.
Nobody is being lazy, nobody is abusing the spirit of anything – if you have a car and you have the opportunity to park in a free space as near to the town centre as possible then you’re going to take it, rather than pay for a space or take a free space further away – doesn’t matter who you are. That’s the economics of driving and parking.
Regular readers of this forum will have seen me mention this before, but maybe its worth mentioning again in the hope that someone who makes these decisions may read this forum..
We have been going to Prestatyn for many years just for the day mainly and up until 5 or 6 years ago maybe a touch longer Prestatyn was like any other town with regards to shoppers and shops, on the decline.
But then a new shopping complex was built right in the town by the station which included a Tesco, M & S Halfords, and various other poular shops with car parking right in the middle of it, similar to Eagles Meadow in Wrexham, but unlike Wrexham it gave 3 free hour parking and still does, it is monitored like Tescos in town by recording the time of entry. (I do realise EM is not managed by the Council, although it should have been !)
This has not only benefitted the shopping complex but the whole town has had a resurgence.
But Wrexham definitely needs to come up with something similar.
MP1953 – I fully agree with your comments. When on holiday in France (pre-covid), I have noticed that all of the public car parks, with the exceptions of cities, are free of charge. France does have ‘out-of-town’ stores and supermarkets, but their towns seem busier and vibrant. It does seem the way forward for Wrexham.
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