Why mention 17/18, what’s the figure since Mayor Khan raised the charge in 2020? In financial year 20/21 it’s £232m, of which £106m was due to the increase. The mayor has also requested £500m from vehicle excise duty funds.
As an NHS employee I use public transport everyday, including during the peak of the pandemic. So don’t patronise me by telling me to get back on public transport pal. Tell your mayor to stop being driven to take his dog for a walk, accompanied by 2 other vehicles.
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Just cos it was a quick google and that’s the figure I could find, which shows how minimal CC income is in the grand scheme of TFL’s income. £232m isn’t much out of pre-pandemic income of £6.2bn, which was the point I was making.
Your first message was perhaps facetious, but I wasn’t quite sure. Your second is just aggressive.
Point out the aggressive parts of the message please? I used the word ‘Pal’ intentionally as you had used it in a response earlier.
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Some good points here, but also we are going wide of the mark. Without singling anyone out, to recap from the FAQ:
Let’s take a little heat out and allow a chance for others to join the discussion if needed with slow mode.
Fair play, you should never respond in kind to our elected public servants, it’s never a good look.
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Indeed. Last week the notices inferred that Pay and Display was going to happen - as a passing member of this forum mentioned to me today - now it isn’t. Probably for the best as a lot of local businesses would take a hit. I do fully expect parking wardens to return having not seen them since the beginning of the pandemic.
Yep, the signs are \ were a bit cryptic:
I’ve updated the topic title to reflect that perhaps parking charges aren’t coming.
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Interesting poll, thanks for setting it up.
Given almost half of Lewisham residents don’t own a car, and motoring as a whole is paid out of general taxation (there is no such thing as ‘road tax’) it really is half the borough subsiding the other half to drive and park for free. Personally I’d walk to HOP more often if I knew I could sit out in a cafe or bar.
Imagine you could rephrase the questions and look at it from the other point of view…
- Motorists should be allowed to park their private property in public spaces for free, at everyone’s expense
- Motorists should pay for the privilege to park on public high streets
- I mostly walk or cycle to the shops
- I’d actually prefer to remove some parking, replace it with ‘parklets’ so that I can eat and drink in a less toxic and noisy atmosphere
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So, whether they bring in parking charges or not, I’m still firmly in the ‘option D’ space.
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Some very good points clausy. With the exception of disabled people and delivery drivers who needs to park along a small high st with local shops and cafes - it’s not like people are doing the Big Shop in that tiny Sainsbury’s. High streets strewn with cars are not pleasant places to shop or eat.
There was also a study in the news yesterday saying living in areas with high air pollution increases the likliehood of suffering badly from Covid. Drivers have to face up to the negative externalities of their choices.
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An interesting perspective, but what is vehicle Excise Duty, which raises approximately £6.5 billion per year? And the £20 billion raised through fuel duty? Are there taxes that are paid by non car owners that aren’t paid by car owners?
Should parking spaces for electric vehicles be available and free?
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Fair enough, Clausy.
Few would disagree with the objective of less pollution and noise.
I remain unconvinced that installing parking meters will achieve these aims. For reduction of noise, pollution etc on Honor Oak high street, the overriding key issues IMHO are vehicles zooming up and down the road, and/or long tail backs from the traffic lights - not use of the few parking bays. (Are you proposing that cars should no longer be able to drive down HO high street?)
Unfortunately, there will be some - including me - who reluctantly need to have a car (for decent reasons - reduced mobility, to hold a job, to support elderly family out of area are a few such reasons).
I am not sure it is true or fair to say that a non-driving half of Lewisham are subsidising car owners, who are very heavily taxed through fuel duties and other taxes: “in 2019/20, VED generated around £7.0 billion (up £0.3 billion from the previous financial year) and Fuel Duty about £27.6 billion” https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/economics#a16
Adding (on top of these taxes) a charge to park on a high street is highly regressive - it will hit people on lower incomes much more than the wealthy. It means that car ownership and use becomes the preserve of the rich and/or pushes people on low income - who need to use a car for good reasons - into debt and relative poverty.
The parking charges on the high street, as I have argued above, are also likely to shift parking and related issues such as traffic, pollution and noise into nearby residential areas (which is probably more harmful to health in my view).
I look forward to a world, hopefully not too far away, where there are universal environmentally friendly transport solutions but in the meantime do not believe that installing parking meters on the HO high street addresses any of the issues raised.
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Interesting poll options, Clausy, thanks for that…
@NL1 and @knot_in_denial hats off to you both for balancing the discussion with some facts. Taxes on motorists are huge. We haven’t even considered the VAT that motorists pay. Average cost of a new car: £33K. About 2M new cars sold in the UK every year. That’s about £13B in VAT, right?
Annual government spending on roads? £11B
So I hope Clausy and others are thankful for the many billions of net contribution to the NHS and other public services made specifically by motorists every year, in addition to all the other various economic and social benefits that motorists bring. I think we can all agree we appreciate having emergency services, deliveries etc…
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Hi Phil and welcome to the forum.
I understand your pain. Might I suggest you get an EV? No road tax, fuel tax at only 5%, free entry into Central London. Oh and a nice government subsidy to offset the VAT on your initial outlay.
Used ones start at around £5k last time I looked. Of course they aren’t emission free but you can’t have everything in this life … Otherwise use your bike if you are local.
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Taking away the pollution aspects for a moment, space is at a premium in cities, especially London. More people want to park than there is space. How can that demand be properly managed if not through parking charges?
Motorists simply have to accept they do not have the right to park on public land free of charge.
We have terrible problems with parking on Taymount Rise - pavements blocked causing pedestrian to have to walk in the road, access to emergency vehicles and the rubbish lorry impeded, double yellow lines ignored with abadon, cars being clipped due to over crowding. It is getting to the point where is is dangerous and still no one wants anything done.
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If you can still park for free for an initial 30 minutes I really don’t see a problem with parking metres. I doubt many people park along that stretch for any longer. Lorries will still have a loading bay too it appears and there will be different parking rules for Disabled Badge holders.
I’m genuinely baffled by how heated this has become!
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Motorists are “the public” too, you know?
Isn’t it reasonable that some land is reserved for the free-of-charge use of pedestrians, some for the free-of-charge use of cars etc? Or are some members of the public more important than others?
Driving is cheap, far too cheap IMO. Especially when you compare to how much it costs to use public transport, and especially considering the impact to our city and the environment.
Lewisham is super relaxed about parking charges, way more than other boroughs.
There is no “war on motorists”, they’ve had it way too easy.
VAT on new cars, yeah I suppose. VAT is collected on most purchases, so if someone didn’t buy a brand new car, they would have probably spent it on something else and generated the same tax revenue.
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Thank you for helping to provide conclusive evidence of the community’s view Claus 
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Of course motorists are the public too, but your analogy does not stand up to much scrutiny.
If I, as a pedestrian, use a pavement or pathway reserved for pedestrians I am moving and others can also use it at the same time, If I stand an block the pavement someone can ask me to move aside. If you park your car on the side of the road no one else can use that space until you move your car.
And yes in the hierarchy of road users pedestrians are the most vulnerable and therefore should generally be the primary consideration, especially in residential areas.
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