Although the inflationary increase is 10% since 2009, the extended time issues are radical with the banning of parking on yellow lines until midnight and the extensions for meters for a similar time except on Sundays until 6 pm.

The new rate of £4.80 per hour will be discounted on Monday to Thursday by 50% from 6:30 till midnight.

WCC maintain that this initiative is to curb congestion in Mayfair but it has stirred up grave concerns from both residents and businesses in the area. Issued residents’ parking permits have increased from 546 in 2009-10 to 1,222 in 2010-11. Currently residents not being able to find a residents car parking space in the evening either park on a yellow line or free on a meter. Both these options are being taken away.

Service industry businesses rely on some of their staff using their car for evening work as they leave late in the night. Will these extra costs be passed on to the dwindling customer base who resent the new costs of evening parking?

Source: Wetherell newsletter September 2011

The council made the on-street charges permanent in January 2010 following a pilot scheme in August 2008.

The “No To Bike Parking Tax” (NTBPT) campaign went to the Court of Appeal after the High Court backed the charge.

The appeal judges said the charge was justified as it was “an obvious way to dampen excess demand”.
‘Not over yet’

Ruling in the case, Lord Justice Maurice Kay, sitting with Lady Justice Smith and Lord Justice Moore-Bick, said: “It is common ground that increasing demand, if evidentially well-founded, would justify charging.

“It is the obvious way to dampen excess demand.”

Following the decision, Warren Djanogly from the bikers group, who took the case to the court, said: “We are hugely disappointed, but it is not over yet.

“We are now thinking of taking our case to the European courts where we expect to get a fairer hearing.”

Councillor Lee Rowley, Westminster’s cabinet member for parking and transportation, said the authority’s decision to charge bikers for parking had been “rigorously scrutinised” and debated.

“We have always maintained that with huge demand for on-street space in Westminster, charging motorcyclists a small sum to park was reasonable and fair and I’m glad the judge has once again reiterated this.”
Weekly protests

He added that the case was not about “the council versus motorcyclists” and hoped that the court’s judgement “will now put an end to any doubt about the legitimacy of our motorbike parking policies”.

The campaigners were ordered to pay the council’s legal costs and were refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Last July the High Court backed the council’s decision to charge a fee for parking.

Westminster Council had argued that there were about 900 free spaces in car parks, but campaigners said a decision for the council could signal the end to free parking for all motorcyclists.

Dr Leon Mannings, a transport policy adviser to the Motorcycle Action Group, said that key issues had not been adequately addressed in the judgement.

“First, is that UK council responses to demand for parking scooters and motorbikes should be more like those for bicycles than cars.
Call for support

“Secondly, the extent to which the whole consultation process was skewed by a fundamental change in the official reasons for a permanent version of the scheme has not been properly considered by either the High Court or the Court of Appeal, in my opinion.”

Since the levy was imposed motorcyclists have held weekly demonstrations around Trafalgar Square which the council said were attempts to “paralyse” central London.

Parking charges for bikes in Westminster range from £1 a day up to £100 for an annual permit.

The British Motorcyclists Federation had urged motorcyclists across the country to support the legal action.

Some time in August 2006, something remarkable happened among London’s drivers. Since January, they had received about 7,500 tickets per month on red routes, which Transport for London (TfL) looks after, for section 25 traffic offences – being “parked in a loading place during restricted hours without loading” – and section 30 ofences – being “parked for longer than permitted”. Then those tickets stopped, almost overnight.

Have a look: for August 2006, the cumulative figures for section 25 and section 30 offences is 8; yet in June it reached a peak of 7,897 + 1,638, or 9,535.

So what happened? Did everyone suddenly start behaving? It seems unlikely, doesn’t it. So what happened to all the tickets, given that the total number doled out for all offences across London actually rose by about 8,000 in August 2006 compared with the previous two months, from 52,023 (June 06) and 52,224 (July) to 60,459 (August)?

The suspicion is that something about the way tickets were assigned to particular offences changed. And that change has persisted: the table here, released at the request of web developer (and London resident and Guardian reader) Adrian Short under Freedom of Information rules by TfL, shows that s25 and s30 traffic offences have remained at virtually zero right up to the end of last year.

In fact, there hasn’t been an s25 or s30 ticket written since July 2007, according to TfL’s figures.

Nobody has parked in a loading bays illegally for 18 months, and nobody has overstayed in a parking place across the whole of London? That’s a flipping miracle. You’d think TfL would be shouting the new-found behaviour of London drivers from the rooftops.

Except … apart from a couple of low totals at the end of 2008 (which may be due to delays in tickets issued working their way through the system), total ticket numbers have generally risen; indeed they hit an all-time high in November 2007. Clearly, people aren’t really behaving better.

Perhaps traffic wardens who used to issue tickets as being for one offence category now issue them under another? We can guess pretty clearly which one that is. If you look at the graph, you’ll notice that one category – section 46 offences – jumps in size around – fancy that – August 2006. Before that, it was averaging 24,215 per month; after that, it averaged 39,207 per month. Hmm, a 15,000 jump, while other categories fall by comparable amounts? How… timely.

So what’s an s46? “Stopped where prohibited (on a red route or clearway)”.

But why have those offences grown? Did London in August 2006 suddenly become a network of red routes and clearways, with traffic wardens finding all those vehicles wrongly parked on them, where previously they had been busy with people in loading bays and overstaying vehicles?

Again, we don’t think so. Occam’s Razor suggests that it’s the same traffic wardens, the same sorts of vehicles, the same mix of offences happening. But now they’re being reported as s46 offences instead of s25s and s30s.

Possibly it’s due to new handheld ticketing computers that we believe were issued to wardens in 2006: could it be that s46 is the default on the screen to issue a new ticket, and that wardens don’t bother to change it?

Whatever it is, there’s a serious problem for TfL if those aren’t all s46 offences which have been ticketed since August 2006.

Because if the ticket isn’t written out to the correct offence, then the fine isn’t payable. Theoretically, TfL might have to pay back millions in traffic fines for people who have been ticketed for s46 offences when they were actually committing s25 or s30 offences.

With an average of 5,990 s25 tickets and 1,561 s30 tickets in the months from January-June 2006, if TfL’s traffic wardens have been ticketing the wrong offence since August 2006, then in the 29-month period between August 2006 and December 2008, then a total of 218,979 tickets have been wrongly written.

At £120 each, that would be £26.3m of wrongly-written tickets.

So what does TfL have to say? We asked about this mysterious change. And indeed there was a change.

First, TfL confirmed that yes, a ticket isn’t valid if it has been written out to the wrong offence. (However, we understand that you can’t claim back if you’ve paid the ticket; payment constitutes acknowledgement of the offence.) And that yes, it decided to in effect do away with s25 and s30 offences.

A TfL spokesperson said:

“TfL has a policy of continually reviewing our red route enforcement strategy to ensure that it is fair, appropriate and easy to understand.

“In 2006, we took the decision to simplify our processes and only use one code when issuing penalty charge notices (PCNs) to those motorists parked illegally on the red routes.

“Code 46 is a red route specific code and covers all contraventions which relate to stopping on a red route where prohibited. It was therefore considered to be the most appropriate code to use.”

Which leaves the question unanswered of why TfL had all those codes in the first place, and why there were still some holdout wardens still issuing s25 and s30 notices for a year. Perhaps they were the diehards. Even so, it’s an interesting insight into what happens when you streamline processes: some of the detail simply vanishes.

But then TfL added an explanation which actually clouds things.

Essentially, as soon as a motorist commits either of the first two contraventions when on a red route, they have contravened code 46.

But have they? As Short notes, being in a loading bay when you shouldn’t isn’t the same as stopping where prohibited. (Is it?) Overstaying at a parking place isn’t quite the same as “stopping”; it’s “remaining stopped” in contravention, not “coming to a halt”.

He suggests that “TfL should keep detailed data to enable them to make wise enforcement policy. We’ve already seen, with the London Wide Removals Scheme, how they use contravention code data to set enforcement policy.” (In that, it determined whether vehicles were being towed away according to offences committed.)

And secondly, he adds, “A legal opinion is needed as to whether TfL’s assertion that they’re using contravention codes correctly is valid.”

Any lawyers out there care to argue the point?

Sell London Property Fast http://www.selltoday.co.uk

The scheme, which was under consideration by officials, would have raised millions of pounds to help councils cope with increasing demand on their services.

However, Mr Pickles has now put a stop to the plans, which were also seen as an attack on out of town supermarkets.

Instead new powers will be given to councils to introduce local tax cuts through reductions in business rates.

Some supermarkets were planning to pass on this new parking levy directly to customers, by listing it as an explicit tax on till receipts.

Others shops would have passed it through higher prices or as a car park charge.

Mr Pickles described it as “a backdoor parking tax on the weekly shop”.

He said: “With the price of groceries rising, it would be wrong to introduce a new parking stealth tax on hard-working households.

“As someone who was brought up in a corner shop, I know how every penny makes a difference when families pay for their weekly shop.”

The Localism Bill, published last week, contains new powers to let councils set local discounts on business rates, provided that they are funded locally.

So local shops that source their produce locally could be entitled to the discounts.

He added: “Accessible parking is vital to the lifeblood of the local firms.

“Hiking parking charges and turning motorists into a cash cow is a false economy – as it drives shoppers away.

“Instead, we should be looking at local tax cuts. Our plans to allow councils to retain their business rate income will also mean councils start having a stake in growing their local economy and support all types of shop, big and small.”

The plans, which were backed by Exeter and Lewes councils, were still officially under consideration by the officials. The Local Government Association said it might roll out the new tax across the country.

It said: “The proposal is for Government to give Exeter City Council (and possibly councils across the UK) the powers to retain revenues from locally imposed non-domestic rates on store car parking spaces.”

Under plans in Exeter, retailers would have been taxed less if they could prove that they had sourced “at least 30 per cent of goods from within 30 miles” of the town.

Any cash raised would be “ring-fenced for local priorities that promote sustainable initiatives in the Exeter area”.

Full article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8210047/Eric-Pickles-axes-plans-to-allow-councils-to-raise-millions-through-new-shopping-tax.html

Those attending St Bartholomew’s and University College hospitals have to pay the top fee to leave a car near the hospital while those visiting St Mary’s or the Heart Hospital are paying £5 an hour for parking.

Macmillan Cancer Support has campaigned for the past three years for charges to be ended for patients.
Helen Rainbow, policy officer at the charity, said: “High parking charges are a huge burden to cancer patients who have to attend hospital regularly, and at a time when they are on a reduced income. It is time this is acknowledged and that they were given more help.”

The figures come as the coalition Government abandoned plans by Labour to ban the charges by 2013, bringing England in line with Scotland and Wales, where hospital patients and their relatives park for nothing.

Overall, trusts across the country rake in more than £110 million a year from parking on their sites, with some earning well over £1 million a year.

Source: thisislondon.co.uk

On Tuesday evening Transport for London said it was running nearly 40 per cent of trains across the network with the strike due to finish at 9pm tonight.

However numerous stations remain closed and services on all but the Northern Line are currently suspended or delayed, with a normal service not expected to resume until Wednesday morning

Tube Lines was part of the Public Private Partnership, imposed by Gordon Brown. The danger now is that the focus on impending cuts could cause real problems for our transport system.

First, rail commuters could face huge fare increases. Train operators are presently allowed to increase fares annually by inflation plus one per cent; Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has now refused to rule out scrapping the formula.

Meanwhile the schedule for Tube upgrades remains uncertain, with the programme for upgrading the Jubilee and Piccadilly lines having slipped badly already.

Then there is the chaos caused by roadworks. Central London faces roadworks this summer on an unprecedented scale. The Mayor protests that he cannot stop roadworks organised by the boroughs, and has called for powers to charge utility companies “lane rental”. The Tories promised such powers during the election campaign. But it has emerged that it will not be until late 2011 at the earliest before City Hall gets them. Increased fines for over-runs are coming sooner than that. But the Mayor and ministers misunderstand that we need far more urgent action to tackle the gridlock on the capital’s streets.

Public transport passengers in London could face a further hike in fares next year due to inflation. Transport for London told the London Assembly’s budget and performance committee that the rate of inflation was affecting its costs and some of that may have to be passed on to passengers next year.

It is likely TfL will recommend that London Mayor Boris Johnson raises fares by two per cent on top of inflation, which would mean a seven per cent increase based on current estimates.

Fares already increased by an average of 12.7 per cent on buses and 3.9 per cent on the Tube and DLR in January of this year.

John Biggs, who chairs the committee, said: “Londoners have already been hit by a hike in fares this year, particularly bus passengers, who bore the brunt of the rises. We are looking at how the existing fare increases have already affected passengers in the capital and we will also assess whether further rises on the scale suggested today by Transport for London can really be justified.”

Jo de Bank of London TravelWatch said: “We know there is a funding gap but passengers must not be priced out of public transport. People will be left stranded if they cannot afford to travel, particularly on buses, which people on lower incomes tend to use.

Safety risks have been denied by Transport for London during this week’s planned tube strike after London Underground says it will operate a full service across the whole of the network, including Jubilee, Piccadilly and Northern lines maintained by Tube Lines, throughout the duration of the strike. All stations will also remain open.

Tube Lines workers are set to go on strike from 7pm on Wednesday after talks between the company and the RMT union broke down.

The union claims the public will be at risk if under-qualified staff members are put in charge of trains during the industrial action.

TfL has assured the public there will be “no compromise” on safety standards and emergency teams were in place in case there is a problem on the network.

A TfL spokesperson said: “Safety is London Underground’s top priority and we would never run trains if it was not safe to do so.

“Should the action go ahead, we do not anticipate any significant impact to Tube services and London Underground intends to operate a full service on all Lines.”

But RMT general secretary Bob Crow said it was clear the strike would have a “major impact”.

He added: “There’s a real danger that tube officials will take serious risks with safety to try and run trains.

“We welcome the intervention of our colleagues from the Fire Brigades Union to try and stop that from happening. No one should underestimate the safety-critical role of the tube’s maintenance and emergency response crews.”

Contingency measures have been put in place in case the strike does happen, with extra Thames Clipper services dedicated to Canary Wharf and extra bike parking facilities in Cabot Square.

]]> http://www.247parking.com/news/tube-to-run-in-full-during-rmt-strike-causes-safety-fears.html/feed 0 http://www.247parking.com/news/commuters-threatened-with-tube-strikes.html http://www.247parking.com/news/commuters-threatened-with-tube-strikes.html#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:16:47 +0000 Rachel http://www.247parking.com/news/?p=796

Staff on London’s Docklands Light Railway (DLR) are to strike over pay and working conditions,

Carrying commuters to and from the Canary Wharf financial sector in the east of the city, the DLR will see strikes occur for three days from Wednesday, June 23. This walk out by platform and station staff will coincide with a planned strike by maintenance workers at contractor Tube Lines on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly underground lines.

“Our members on the Docklands Light Railway have shown once again that they will not be bullied by management in to taking on more work and more responsibility without being properly compensated by the company,” RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said in a statement.

On Thursday, the RMT announced that workers on Tubes Lines would carry out two 48-hour strikes over pay, jobs and working conditions.

The strikes, from Wednesday, June 23, and Wednesday, July 14, will likely have a knock-on effect on all the system, it added.