Sunday 12 April 2009

Parking Disaster

The Town needs all the trade it can get which means, at Easter, having its car parks used at efficiently.

Yet.

While The Gill Car Park was full with cars queuing for places at 1 pm yesterday, Easter Saturday.



The Stockbridge Lane Car Park was nearly empty.



Drivers from Broughton, Barrow and the surrounding areas who were waiting for spaces in The Gill were totally unaware of an empty car park only yards away up the hill.

Why is this?

Because the County Council refuse to put adequate signs to the large Stockbridge Car Park.

There is no sign at the Market Cross where one is obviously needed.

There is only a small one at Hill Foot for those coming in from Barrow.

This story is made all the more deplorable by the decisions of our head of Highways, Nick Raymond and our County Councillors Wendy Kolbe and Pauline Halfpenny who chaired the series of three consultations in Ulverston in October.

At these meetings, those present decided by a large majority that better signing was needed to the Stockbridge Car Park, yet Nick managed to score this proposal so that it went to the bottom of the list of priorities for Ulverston and despite Wendy Kolbe's repeated assurances that we could leave the details to her to sort out, nothing has happened to improve this signing.

Furthermore most of the great and good from the Town Council were present and this anomaly has continued unchanged despite repeated requests for explanations.

Somehow "Signs to the Stockbridge Car Park" were seen by Nick Raymond as "promoting the use of the motor car " and not seen as environmentally friendly.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's my positive idea for the day Geoff - if Stockbridge Lane car park is empty on one of the busiest days of the year .....why not make it freeeeeeeeee !!! and let the public know that Ulverston has freeeeeeeeee shoppers parking ! A by-product of this would be that other car parks would have more spaces fpr those people who can't manage the climb to Stockbridge Lane.

Geoff Dellow said...

If only!

Please write to every Cllr you know and get them to campaign.

For the time being, they're not listening to me!

How is it that Wetherby pop. 10,000 manage to get free parking?

Tom said...

Just seen on the evening mail web site that prices of parking on the car parks look to be raised.Alot of locals will pay for an hour so thats going to go up by 20p per hour from 90p to £1-20.Now you've highlighted that stockbridge car parks normally empty.Why don't s.l.d.c leave that car park how it is or maybe make it cheaper and even have a max stay of 2 hours,this way the locals will no that this car park is cheaper while leaving the other car parks for visitors to the town.Lets be honest here tho,how long do locals stay in town for,i no myself max is an hour cause there's nowt there even the out door market is a waste of time now they've been driven out of town due to the prices.

Anonymous said...

I noticed chattaway from the farmers is cashing in on the new car park prices,theres a sign outside advertising all day parking for £3.Now that beats paying the town prices,if i parked in town all day i'd be using that place