Free parking plan for Welshpool
Tuesday 12th October 2010, 6:00PM BST.
Civic leaders today unveiled plans to introduce an hour’s free parking in Welshpool. Welshpool Town Council said it hoped to introduce the scheme as soon as money became available.
Robert Robinson, town clerk, said: “I’ve already been in touch with the county council to ask them how much they would stand to lose if they let motorists park free for up to an hour in all Welshpool car parks.
“It’s something that we as a council have been planning to do for a while and if the cost of it allows us it’s something we’ll try and introduce in the town.
“If they come back to me with a cost then it’s a possibility that the town council would be able to compensate them for the shortfall.
“The main reason why we want to offer free car parking in the town is to help clamp down on illegal parkers.
“A lot of motorists come into town just to pop to the bank or to get milk, they don’t want to pay for a ticket so they end up parking somewhere unsafe.”
Mr Robinson added that more than 90 per cent of residents “who took part in the recent town centre plan survey also support this initiative”.
A spokesman for Powys County Council said: “Income generated from car parks offset the costs of other services and is vital in ensuring that council tax increases are kept to a minimum.
“However, if Welshpool Town Council has any proposal to subsidise car parking within the town, we would be interested to talk to them.”
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As a car owner you pay for a road fund licence which goes to build and maintain roads and motorways. Your £160 annual fee works out at just over 1.8 pence per hour which enables you to keep your car on the road for all 8760 hours there are in each year.
For that 1.8 pence per hour your roads are maintained, swept, have road signs, traffic lights and even the emergency services at your call each and every hour
its pretty good value for money.
Why then are car parks owned by us,via our councils charging us so much money to park our cars in them?
Surly the cost of the car parks which we,the tax and rate payers, have already paid for should be more in line with our road network charges, they are after all providing far less in terms of a service.
The motorist is far too often use as a money generating centre. We already pay VAT and purchase tax when we buy a new vehicle we pay insurance tax when we ensure it paid the previously mentioned road tax we pay tax on petrol and VAT is applicable every time you buy a spare parts or have your vehicle serviced.
Having said that I suspect most motorists would be willing to pay a modest sum commensurate with the service they are receiving. A sum of maybe 20p per hour which is still 500% more than the going rate of road tax would seem to me to be acceptable.
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