Monday 21 April 2008

It doesn't stop at Queen Street

Our group is convinced that Queen Street is only a pilot scheme, and that 'pay & display' will be rolled out to each of the town's other 'free' car parks in turn. The proposal currently under consideration is totally profit driven, as the car park under threat has little or no appeal for shoppers. A visit any Saturday afternoon will confirm this to be the case.
However it is only too obvious that Roads Service have little interest in presenting an accurate account of car park utilisation in Enniskillen. Why else would they have conducted their most recent survey in December 2007, if not to put a false slant on the situation? Everyone knows that the lead up to Christmas is the busiest period of the year in any town.
Even if the changes at Queen Street car park are a one-off, the consequences will be experienced in both Castle Place and Wellington Place car parks. The 95 displaced motorists from Queen Street will seek 'free' parking elsewhere. Effectively there will be more people competing for fewer 'free' spaces.

2 comments:

Impoverished Motorist said...

The real danger in the creeping privatisation of the carparks in Enniskillen is that in a while, the only free carparks will be those at the large supermarkets and the new shopping centres. This will be enormously disadvantageous to the locally owned family businesses which bring money into the community and give Enniskillen its unique character. This is unfair competition and completely unacceptable

Fair Play said...

You are absolutely spot on. Why else would Roads Service permit Asda to influence the traffic flow at the other end of town (and indeed finance the new layout). Perhaps we should all ask Asda to pay for a by-pass. Let's face it Roads Service are never going to get around to doing anything meaningful about the traffic problems in the town.