Leeds City Council and Car Parking - Short Sighted or Hidden Agenda?

I read with interest about the decision by Leeds City Council to take enforcement action against a number of "temporary" long stay car parks located just to the south of the city centre, forcing them to close and meaning 2,500 fewer commuter car parking spaces in Leeds.

The action has been taken by the planning department of Leeds City Council and has been upheld by an independent planning inspector and so clearly is correct as far as planning legislation goes. Fair enough - the car parks do not have planning consent to operate and so should be closed.

However, it doesn't take much thought around the subject to suspect either a (not very well) hidden agenda or a lack of foresight, or more probably a mixture of the two.

The Council seem to suggest that users of the car parks are people who work in the city centre of Leeds and that there are plenty of other spaces for them to use in city centre car parks. Are they the spaces in the higher priced, Council owned car parks?

There has also been mention of the need to reduce car usage, whether from a congestion or environmental point of view and withdrawing easy car parking opportunities may help this. However, in order to reduce car use we need viable alternatives in the form of good, cheap, reliable public transport. Park and ride only works if commuters know that car parks are safe, free and that the hop onto public transport into the city centre is a short one that. No one will use a system where they have pay a fortune to park, wait around to catch a bus that only leaves every half an hour, takes an age to get through congested streets and then spend all day worrying that their car will damaged or stolen when they return. We see schemes for trams and trolleybuses suggested and then not happen.

Excuse me whilst I roll my eyes at the inability of our local politicians to actually deliver a joined up, workable transport strategy for our city that will help move Leeds forward and instead decide to force a few small car parks to close.

A report and lively discussion about this can be read here.

At Calls Wharf we cater for the car user, being located on the inner city loop with easy access from all areas of the region and with on site car parking available. We also cater for the public transport user being less than a five minute walk from the train station and the bus station.