Huge increase in parking charges planned for York residents.

York’s unique Minster badge scheme which has helped to protect York residents from high car parking charges is being scrapped by Labour.

Under the LibDems, in 2011 residents paid £1.10 per hour to park at most City centre car parks (those designated as “standard stay”).

Residents will now see that increase by a staggering 82% to £2.00.

click to enlarge
click to enlarge

The Council is offering what they term as a frequent visitor badge.

However these will cost £20 a year to buy (and are not restricted to York Council Taxpayers).

click to see full survey results
click to see full survey results

The Councils own survey (see left) of residents, revealed that the vast majority no longer drive into the City centre frequently enough to make such a badge a worthwhile purchase.

Only those using the car parks several times a week would get any benefit and they probably already choose to buy a season ticket. (A season ticket, which allows unlimited parking for a year, costs less than £500 for a small/low emission vehicle)

The news comes at a time when traders have claimed that Saturdays no parking fee trial had been a success.

The trial will have cost the Council around £20,000 in income. First buses will also have lost income on their Park and Ride contract.

Crunch time for City centre

So its crunch time for the City centre economy. Few residents are going to pay those kind of charges when they can get free parking at out of City shopping centres.

The Council is still promising “pay on exit” barriers at the Marygate car park, but that initiative is too little too late.

Even if the Lendal Bridge closure is lifted in March, it will take a long time to restore the City’s reputation with both residents and visitors.

The number of shoppers in the City centre was continuing to fall even before the Lendal Bridge closure

The next local elections are little more than a year away now though,  so there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

Labour are leaving an economic nightmare for someone to clear up.

Bus service reliability in York – FOI response

Apparently the York Council has not asked bus companies to reveal service reliability stats.

bus-stop1

Despite claims to the contrary, a Freedom of Information request has revealed that the York Council has not apparently asked local bus operators to publish service reliability statistics.

The claims were made by politicians in 2012 as they tried to justify only publishing an annual reliability figure (which later turned out to be a one day sample).

The annual figure published on the DpT web site suggests that 1 in 5 buses in York are more than 5 minutes late.

In 2013, the Council claimed that a data sharing agreement (which has now been published) prevented them from revealing figures which would tell passengers what reliability levels were being achieved.

Rail users have had access to such information for over a decade.

More recently the Council has admitted that it does get these figures on a regular basis but aggregation would have to be done “manually” and to do so would be prohibitively expensive.

The Council claims that its data is supplied through a system supplied by Vix Acis.

This company publicly claims that their Horizon web based system does provide “management with the ability to mine historical data for service improvement and reporting against key performance indicators”.

So the suspicion remains that, for some reason, both the bus companies and the Council are desperate to hide just how reliable bus services in the City actually are.

Our view is that (at least) each month the number of buses running on time (within 5 minutes of the published timetable) on each route should be published on the web.

Free City centre car parking on Saturday

Car park Richard iii

All council owned car parks are offering free parking all day and evening on Saturday 1 February 2014.

Thirteen car parks will be free to use for residents and visitors to help them enjoy York’s vast city centre offering.

The car parks that will be free to use on Saturday 1 February are: Bishopthorpe Road, Bootham Row, Castle, Castle Mills, Esplanade, Foss Bank, Haymarket, Marygate, Monkbar, Nunnery Lane, Piccadilly, St George’s Field and Union Terrace.

The initiative aims to counter the decline in shopper numbers in the City centre following the closure of Lendal Bridge.

The Council is already forecasting that it will be £200,000 under budget for car parking income this year.

Government announces more vehicle recharging points for York

Eight new rapid chargers for electric vehicles are to be installed  in York, following an announcement from the Department for Transport today that an additional £244,500 funding is to be made available to support a national ‘ultra low emission vehicle’ campaign.

car recharging point

The new points can charge an electric car in around 20-minutes and will be located at Park&Ride sites and convenient locations across the city including the new Sports Village.

This means that electric vehicle drivers can travel around Yorkshire and be confident of being able to charge up their batteries quickly and at low cost. Electric vehicles can run for as little as two pence per mile and pay nothing for road tax.

The take up of electric powered vehicles in York has been slow.

More about existing electric vehicle charging points in York at itravelyork.com

City centre paving consultation

The York Council is delivering a leaflet to all households outlining its plans for resurfacing works in the City centre.

Exhibition Square plans

Exhibition Square plans

They are right to do so but, in pointing to improvements planned for Exhibition Square, Blake Street and Fossgate, they lamentably fail to answer the question that will be on every taxpayer’s lips.

How much will these paving schemes cost?

There is little new in the leaflet.  The Labour Council changed the Council’s forward programme in 2011 putting the modernisation of Kings Square ahead of the Fossgate pedestrianisation scheme which had been set to go ahead in 2012.

Next in line were to have been improvements to Duncombe Place, which could have provided a large and useful pedestrian precinct.

But the Councils increasing financial problems meant that progress would inevitably have slowed.

Residents might usefully have been asked when completing the “on line” survey whether they want any of these schemes to go ahead or whether the money might be better spent repairing the roads in sub-urban areas?

The danger in the Councils approach is that the improvement of the City centre may become politically toxic.

Against a background of plans for a further £1 million cut in road maintenance in sub-urban areas, residents are likely to demand of Council candidates – at the next local elections in 2015 – a commitment to improving public service standards in residential areas.

The City centre may find that its share of available resources is reduced.

‘The only way is Essex’ say Lib Dems

Liberal Democrats say that Labour run York Council should follow the example of Essex and introduce an amnesty for drivers fined for breaking controversial traffic restrictions.

Earlier this month Essex County Council said that 30,000 drivers penalised for using a new bus lane in Colchester will be repaid or have their fines cancelled after the council agreed its signs were unclear. Fines, amounting to about £1m have been paid to the council, will now be handed back and any outstanding charges will be cancelled.

In York, over 40,000 fines have so far been issued to drivers crossing Lendal Bridge after Labour run City of York Council partially closed it to traffic at the end of August. The council has been inundated with complaints about the closure, particularly regarding the poor signage. Indeed, at the beginning of December the council was forced to install new warning signs. It is thought that the authority is now routinely not contesting appeals against fines; however, thousands of motorists are believed to have already paid.
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Car parking chaos hits York City centre

As the sales get into full swing, angry motorists are demanding to know why York has stopped providing car parking space availability information?

Click to access "live" parking and travel information

Click to access “live” parking and travel information

Until 2011, anyone could access the Councils web site and see how many spaces were unoccupied at each car park.

That information has now disappeared although other Councils still provide the service.

The information isn’t even provided for York’s showcase Park and Ride sites

Today car parks like Castle were full but the Council’s travel service hasn’t bothered to use its “twitter” feed to update potential users.

Signs on the approach roads to the City centre, which indicate space availability, are also unreliable, so many motorists are driving round and round looking for spaces.

This increases pollution and congestion on City centre roads.

Sadly it is another example of new technology providing information that is less useful than what was available a decade ago.

Traffic congestion cameras now working in York

click to access

click to access

8 months after they were supposed to be available for residents to access, the cameras which provide real time information on congestion levels, on key roads in York, are now working.

The inability of the Councils new camera control computer systems, to provide the kind of access that other Council have done routinely for the last 10 years, has been a source of embarrassment in the City.

Links are now also available for mobile devices.

Latest Lendal Bridge report reveals 3000 drivers a week still being fined

No significant change to Park and Ride bus service journey times as total number fined climbs to 45,000.

The Council have now published an updated report on their web site assessing the impact of the Lendal Bridge closure.

Traffic on Lendal bridge after closure

Traffic on Lendal bridge after closure

Any hopes that the information would be objective and impartial are quickly dispelled as the report resorts to sloganising “York remains very much open for business” whatever that is supposed to mean.

The figures for Park and Ride show small increases in the number of passengers (following a trend evident for the last 6 years over which passenger growth on the services has been sustained each year).

Some services show small reductions in journey times since the Lendal Bridge restrictions were introduced. Others – like the link to the Designer Centre – show increases in journey times.

This rather confirms what is so obvious to many – that traffic congestion, on alternative routes to Lendal, is continuing to increase.

No information is provided on normal “stage carriage” bus services.

There was a 10% increase in traffic volumes on Clifton bridge when comparing November 2013 with the same month last year. Increased traffic volumes on Foss Islands Road are also evident.

The report makes no attempt to assess increases in journey times or costs for drivers. There is no information about pollution levels

The Council has also updated the tables showing the number of Penalty Charge Notices issued to drivers on Lendal Bridge and in Coppergate.

The numbers fined on Coppergate doubled to 595 during the St Nicholas Fayre week.

The number issued on Lendal Bridge is still regularly in excess of 2500 a week.

70% of the tickets issued are to visitors to the City

Lendal:
02-08 Sept (4 days enforcement, commenced Wednesday 1675
09-15 Sept 2015 (6 days enforcement, because of the Skyride event) 2015
16-23 Sept (5 days enforcement, cameras updating) 1766
23 – 29 September 2,762 PCNs issued (6 days enforcement) 2762
30 Sep – 6 October 1,885 PCNs issued (5 days enforcement) 1885
7 – 13 October 2,487 PCNs issued (5 days enforcement) 2487
14 – 20 October 3,640 PCNs issued 3640
21 – 27 October 3,879 PCNs issued 3879
28 Oct – 3 November 4,098PCNs issued 4098
4 – 10 November 1,921 PCNs issued 1921
11 – 17 November 3,172 PCNs issued 3172
18 – 24 November 2,801 PCNs issued 2801
25 Nov – 2 December 2,553 PCNs issued 2553
Coppergate:
15-18 August (4 days enforcement, commenced Wednesday) 1085
19-25 August 1741
26-01 Sept 880
02-08 Septd 850
09-15 Sept (6 days enforcement, because of the Skyride event) 841
16-22 Sept (5 days enforcement, cameras updating and gas works commenced) 324
23 – 29 September 405 PCNs issued (6 days enforcement) 405
30 Sep – 6 October 345 PCNs issued (5 days enforcement) 345
7 – 13 October 593 PCNs issued (5 days enforcement) 593
14 – 20 October 869 PCNs issued 869
21 – 27 October 755 PCNs issued (6 days enforcement) 755
28 Oct – 3 November 416PCNs issued 416
4 Nov – 10 November 146 PCNs issued # 146
11 – 17 November 240 PCNs issued # 240
18 – 24 November 251 PCNs issued # 251
25 Nov – 2 December 595 PCNs issued 595

– Of all PCNs reviewed, up to Monday 8 December 2013, there was a 30:70 split on YO and non-YO postcodes.

# – only one camera operational.