Richmond charge parents for driving 4x4s

I haven't posted for a while as I have been off sick, and then have had LOADS of conference type things to go to. Sorry.

I just wanted to comment briefly on Richmond councils plans to charge parents for parking outside the school.

It strikes me as a brilliant idea, and is something I would like to see more councils doing, particularly when they introduce controlled parking zones (CPZ's).

In Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, my sister in law used to "Park & Stride" to school - parking at her brothers house, then walking her kids the final fifteen minutes to the school (along with her brothers children). The system worked very well until the council introduced a CPZ at her brothers house.

She could no longer park outside his house for 30 minutes each morning and each evening without him paying for a visitor pass (which was around £2 a day I think). She now (disappointingly to me) drives her kids the whole way.

I am broadly in favour of CPZ's. When used delicately they can reduce congestion on roads, encourage people to walk further and make streets safer and nicer for walking. All too often, however, the introduction of a CPZ is a blunt instrument - banning all parking from the street, no matter how long they want to park there. I think most people would agree that there is a world of difference between someone parking outside your house for 30 minutes while they walk their children to school, and someone parking outside for the whole day while they go to work, or go shopping.

The blunter CPZ's tend to move the problem on, rather than solving it, and the CPZ has to grow and grow to accommodate the movement.

While I can't find whether the Richmond experiment is within a wider CPZ, it sounds to me like an excellent example of a "delicate tool".

I have met the leader of Richmond council, and he was explaining to me the thinking behind their previous headline grabbing initiative (which was to charge 4x4s more for resident parking). While the increased pollution (CO2) was a major part of the reasoning, larger (more polluting) cars take up more parking space, and cause more road damage (being heavier), so they are asked to pay proportionately more - seems fair to me!

In the Richmond example the charge works out, even for the most expensive cars, at less than 40p per school day. Despite the protestations of the militant AA, I hope most people would agree that this charge is actually very reasonable (remember it is only the biggest most polluting cars that will pay this).