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Parking

Letter I just sent to East Kent Mercury.



Mr. Graham Smith
The Editor
East Kent Mercury
13 Queen Street
Deal
Kent CT14 6EX

Dear Mr. Smith:

Re: Parking in Deal and Walmer

Parking in Deal and Walmer is often difficult and is going to get even more difficult as new developments, such as North Barracks, occur. I was interested to find out what Dover District Council was doing to provide more parking and the short answer is ‘Very little’.

DDC have told me that it received £1,574,424 from parking charges in the last three years. DDC also received £496,532 in parking fines in the last three years. I.e. a total of just over £2 million. The amount spent by DDC on providing new parking spaces in the last three years is just £8,000! This provided 14 new spaces on South Street, behind the bingo hall. This cost is low so I assume that DDC already owned the land and this cost was to pave and paint it, and of course to install the payment machine.

In view of this lack of investment it is hard to see how DDC can justify the increase in parking charges that were imposed some months ago. In fact it confirms the national policy of ‘stick it to the motorist’!

I believe DDC should use this £2 million to purchase property in Deal to provide more parking. We might then almost reach the state of Nirvana where parking could be free (or at least much less expensive). Parking wardens could be transferred to more useful and productive work and Deal merchants would benefit from the extra £500,000 consumers have to spend each year.

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To ABD members:

I am sure that every local council rips motorists off in the same way. Time for a grass-roots campaign to all local councils? I requested the facts under the Freedom of Information Act

Michael G

Head in sand?

Having just got back from a long road trip in the USA I am reminded how abysmally ignorant our so-called road planners are.

The USA manages to keep traffic flowing through construction sites much better than in the UK. Also, I think they build roads better so they don't need constant repairs, but that's another issue. Speed limits are reduced in construction sites, as here, but ONLY WHEN CONSTRUCTION WORKERS ARE PRESENT! Makes sense, and would make even more sense here when it is often difficult to see anyone working on some of our sites.

The other very useful feature is that they don't (as far as I can see) have BUS LANES. What they have are HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) or CARPOOL lanes. These are restricted to Buses, taxis, motorcycles and cars with two or more occupants. (Sometimes this is three or more.) The nice feature is that the restriction only applies between certain hours. e.g. 7 - 10 am, or 3 - 6 pm. The rest of the time the HOV lane is open to anyone.

Our politicians spend a lot of time on overseas jaunts - pity they can't learn something while they are there.

Michael Gosling

Dangerous Hospitals

According to the Government’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), dangerous medical equipment resulted in 184 deaths and 1,197 serious injuries in England alone in 2006. This is a rise of 100% in just three years! Any road with this sort of rising accident rate would immediately be an excuse to introduce some of the endless plethora of ‘safety’ initiatives, that punish all drivers and make driving more frustrating. Speed reduction, cameras, carriageway narrowing, junctions blocked off, etc with local MP’s, Councillors, NIMBY residents squawking on about ‘dangerous road’ or ‘race track’, ‘something has to be done’ blah, blah, blah. Somebody getting killed or injured in a hospital is not so visually dramatic or public, as a road crash, but it is still a human life, yet all these people stay silent?

Champagne Socialists

While the government does its very best to deter us form using our cars and herd us on to public transport, it has a very different approach (surprise) for its own mobility. The governments own personal chauffeur service managed to waste £7,470 in parking ticket fines and £350 on congestion charge fines in London in the year 2005-6, the last year for which figures are available. Seems they can not do their job and stay within the laws that they have voted in!

Bus subsidies 2006/7

Rural bus subsidy for Kent for 2006/2007 will be £2,223,254 and £177,504 for Medway.

More ‘Criminals’??

Mentioning criminals in the last story, remember from last April it is an offence to smoke in a company car (if used by more than one person) in Wales. We have to wait to July 1^st in England, before we lose our right to ‘choice’ and get hunted down by the anti-smoking police. Perhaps they will have special roadside cameras? ? ?

One million drivers

Research by Direct Line has found that more than one million drivers are one conviction away from an automatic driving ban and that 14% of these would lose their jobs if banned. This government, with its anti-driver policies has conceived a whole new genre of so called ‘criminals’ as people have been tempted to drive on whilst banned, to maintain living standards for themselves and their families. Most will be speeding offences and of course nobody would dare to suggest, that many speed limits are set to low and are totally meaningless without putting into the equation prevailing road conditions. But our mindless obedience is the Holy Grail for politicians.

Grabbing Gordon Brown

From the 1^st May 2007, the new car first registration fee has risen by 32% from £38 to £50 so clawing another estimated £22 million tax windfall. Plans for additional rises in 2008 and 2009 are already planned.

A different attitude to motorists

Extract from the Massachusetts (USA) State Drivers Manual:

"In today’s world, driving a car is a vital part of life."

Michael Gosling

Miscellaneous examples of motorists' hell

•          December 2006: Sir Richard Branson is to receive £1.3 billion (£1,300,000,000) of public money to run Virgin trains until 2012. About £10 per passenger.

•          November 2006: Network Rail seeks £29 billion government funding - that is £29,000,000,000 - i.e. about £500 from every man, woman and child in the country! But the government is going to raise £28 billion from motorists through increased congestion charging, fines and road pricing. 

•          November 2006: The Kent & Medway Safety Camera Partnership has cost the public nearly £9 million ( a mere pittance!) over the last three years.

•          Kent County Council had budgeted in 2003/2004 to spend £36 million on maintenance and repair of 5,000 miles of roads. £50 million is to be spent on asylum seeker support. 

•          Canterbury City Council from April 2003 to March 2004, issued 25,552 parking ticket fines which brought in £691,254. Overall revenue from parking services generated £1,879,680. Nationally, parking income has now gone through the one BILLION pound mark!

•          Speed camera fines in Thanet have doubled in 2004 from the previous year, bringing an extra £360,000 for all those with their snouts in the trough! 

•          Speeding tickets issued in Kent for 2004 was 82,906. There were 93 deaths on Kent roads in 2000; in 2004 there were 100 deaths.

•          DfT emissions failure: While the Government is calling for a crackdown on 'speeders' under the pretence to cut emissions, the Department for Transport has failed to meet its' own emission targets for the past two years! Nationwide we have millions of speed humps and every one is causing vehicles to slow and accelerate away, causing fuel wastage and increased emissions, just the same as all the other 'traffic calming' measures that hinder fuel efficient free flowing traffic

Car Safety Problems

BBC Watchdog programme on Tuesday 23 January 2007 had an article about defects on early models of the Renault Clio. Apparently the bonnet safety catch can jam in the open position. The bonnet may appear to be closed properly but is not. Over 250 people have had the bonnet fly up while they were driving - in some cases at 70 mph on a motorway. It smashes the windscreen and of course the driver can see nothing!

The design of the safety catch has been changed on the latest Clio. Renault refuse to acknowledge there is a problem on the earlier models and have not recalled them!

Question: Why does the Dept of Transport do nothing about this problem?