Vorpal wrote:blackbike wrote:karlt wrote:
I'm sure they do. They do around here as well. It's still impossible for Mrs KarlT to get to work (15 miles away) in less than 2 hours by public transport. We could move nearer, but then I'd have a much longer commute. And for all we know I or she could be working in a completely different place in a years' time.
The days of a long term job so you can choose to live near it are long gone for many people.
Provision of guaranteed car parking and therefore car ownership, only encourages the trend towards working further from home, so helping to damage the environment and to cause health problems.
If we decreased the number of people who could afford to keep a car because they couldn't afford to park it then employers would have to respond by siting workplaces closer to their workers, as was the case before mass car ownership.
Councils should not encourage a car dependent employment market. They should discourage it or remain neutral.
On my street I know many people who commute to work in the city centre eight miles away by car and they keep their vehicles in the residents parking scheme at night. The rush hour traffic is dreadful, with use of public transport at the low levels found all over the UK except London. If the scheme was abolished these people might choose to use the frequent bus and tram services into town, and the roads would be less congested as a result. This would be a great environmental and health benefit. The scheme encourages car usage by guaranteeing a parking spot for residents in the evening. Use of my street for parking by staff at nearby workplaces could be prevented by double yellow lines.
If you want people to use public transport to go to work in the city centre, there are much easier ways of doing it. Eliminating residents parking schemes would be unpopular. If instead, employers were taxed and/or had to tax parking spaces as a benefit, but received tax relief for subsidizing public transport tickets/passes and for implementing programs to encourage active travel, I think that you would find that much more effective at easing congestion.
Why should employers be taxed because of the free choices of their employees to use a car to travel to work?
I can just about remember the time when most people went to work or school on foot or by bus, train or bicycle, and car ownership was much lower than it is now. On my childhood street in a moderately affluent part of suburban Manchester car ownership was the exception, not the norm.
It wasn't the employers in my city centre who made people all buy cars and cause all the traffic congestion and parking difficulties we now have.
These environmentally damaging and socially irresponsible things were cause by thousands of people freely choosing to abandon more appropriate forms of transport and electing to use a car instead, and to use that car every day on the streets of the city during rush hour.
Councils should focus on the cause of the current problems - the people who choose to use cars. Actively making car usage and car ownership more convenient by providing residents parking schemes was a big mistake, about as poorly thought out as most other transport related things councils do, such as the pathetic and useless cycle lanes that they painted about 20 years ago.
Also, taxing employers would be hypocritical in many cases. In the local town which has the headquarters of my council the only large employer which provides free parking for its workforce is the council itself! Most other workers have to park far away or pay at one of the council's car parks. The council's alleged desire for locals to cycle to work or use public transport obviously doesn't apply to its own staff.
