Park & Ride
Site of proposed Batheaston Park & Ride, on the edge of the World Heritate Site of Bath
Park and Ride (P&R) schemes are promoted to reduce congestion in towns. But they can lead to large car parks being built on greenfield sites, reduced bus services into rural areas and more traffic on surrounding roads.
P&R is claimed to be a green option as it promotes buses. But research dating from the 1990s shows that the overall effect of P&R is to increase the distances travelled by car. In other words it actually increases carbon emissions at a time when they need to be reduced significantly. Far from being challenged, this evidence has been accepted by some motoring organisations.
> Park & Ride - Its role in local transport policy (pdf)
Tarmac necklaces for towns
New Local Transport Plans are being drawn up across England as current ones run out in March 2011. Because of a fatalistic assumption that there is little that can be done to give people real options to driving outside towns, a new wave of P&R is planned. Some towns are even planning to have as many as eight P&R sites, while others want to keep on expanding existing car parks into sprawling sites.
> Save Bathampton Meadows – campaign to stop new eastern Bath P&R
> Say no to Canterbury plans to turn orchards into car parks – CPRE Kent
Parking for prosperity?
Besides P&R schemes to get drivers onto buses for the last leg of their trip into towns, strategic P&R is being proposed for longer journeys. The Highways Agency is, for example, looking into introducing P&R to encourage people to switch to coaches or car sharing for longer road journeys.
At the end of 2009, the Government published a report on Better Rail Stations calling for 100,000 new car parking spaces to be introduced at rail stations by 2020. All this extra parking would generate more motor traffic, particularly around stations and P&R sites, while reducing the viability of new or even existing public transport services. With funding so constrained, we think a wider range of alternatives should be considered that are better at tackling climate change and car dependency
> Joint Response for Better Rail Stations – written by CPRE and supported by a wide range of NGOs (pdf)
Link and Ride - a better solution
A major problem with P&R is that separate bus services are needed and these go no further than the edge of towns. Link and Ride is based on the idea of improving existing bus services. By using existing car parking sites that see little use during the day time such as at pubs and village halls, those who live away from regular bus routes can still access a bus but do not need to drive so far. There may be the opportunity of cycling or taking demand responsive trasport to reach these bus stops.
New ways of providing public transport are now possible following the introduction of the Local Transport Act 2008. Combined with real time travel information and smart ticketing, these new ways of providing transport should be used more widely. For example, minicabs can be used to offer bus services on rural bus routes into the evening, giving people new opportunities.
