One of the most contentious areas of Council policy is parking, so I thought I would do a post reminding people why we have parking restrictions. Broadly, there are two reasons: emissions and congestion.
The emissions argument is one that most people think of in these days of Climate Change campaigns. Transport is one of the main emissions producers in London, although it is not just greenhouse gases, but also particulates that can seriously damage air quality. By encouraging people not to use cars so much and by enhancing fuel efficiency when they do, local and central government can reduce emissions.
The second argument is based on congestion. Even if someone solved the pollution issues tomorrow by inventing a zero emission vehicle that we all instantly adopted, we would still need parking restrictions to cope with congestion. Especially in an urban area like London, we simply don't have any more road space. More car journeys translates not into quick and convenient travel, but into sitting in traffic jams. Already, any mishap in Harlesden Town Centre quickly leads to gridlock. I am told that traffic takes at least a couple of hours to clear every time there is a football match at Wembley Stadium, and that is with the vast majority of people going to the Stadium by public transport. Without restrictions, it would be completely impossible to run a business in the Wembley area, and pretty intolerable to live there.
This is why the Planning Service requires limits to car parking spaces in new developments, sometimes imposing "car free" restrictions. Whatever the drawbacks of such restrictions the alternatives would be permanent gridlock.
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