Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Can Anyone Explain this Council Logic?
In a round-robin about new parking charges that hit my inbox today, Haringey Council wrote the following:
Visitors parking permits will be simplified and no longer be subject to a limited allocation
This is to ensure we are taking a fair approach when it comes to everyone who wants to park in our borough and to encourage people to use other forms of transport if possible.
As I read it they're saying that they're going to make visitor parking permits easier to get "to encourage people to use other forms of transport". So, making it easier to use a car will encourage people not to use a car.
Is there some good logic there that is eluding me or is it the nonsense I think it is?
ADDENDUM:
The discussion that follows from this post has revealed that visitor parking charges will more than double and residents will no longer be able to exchange unused permits.
Read about the proposals on Haringey's website here.
You can make an objection by email to traffic.orders@haringey.gov.uk
You can see a Freedom of Information request submitted on this issue here
Tags for Forum Posts: parking, parking permits, visitor parking permits
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Complaining about the charges for parking your car in the street is ridiculous when if this space was on the open market it would be £100 a month. Well, perhaps it would be half that because of the increase in supply of spaces but I hope you see my point. The parking in the street should be literally that, trees and gardens where the cars are now.
By the way, the council have some REALLY bad figures for how much parking is actually used. They don't go on the CPZ permits but said that they did a survey. The survey has some tricky sleight of hand where they estimate the parking spaces available by measuring the size of the street and dividing by 5m. This does not take into account disabled bays, fire hydrants or crap parking. For instance at midday on a Sunday they have Lausanne as 85% full... it's not, it's completely full. Expect charges to go up and available parking to go down.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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John, you keep on about the open market price of parking space.
Which would be fine if and when the owners of streets, parks, pavements, air, water, schools, hospitals, seats in the House of Lords, schools and universities, pews in churches, bondsmen and women's bodies and time - and owners of everything else - are permitted to trade those capital assets on the open market.
I assume this is their longterm aim and they have moved a long way along the route towards it. Massive cross-generational debt being one clever means to achieve it. Another the gig economy, zero hours contracts and the privatisation of caring complementing the staffing of public services by volunteers. (The filmmaker, artist and writer Hito Steyerl coined the phrase "self unemployment".)
But we ain't there yet.
The purpose of parking regulation is management and rationing of a scarce asset. Not a business to screw as much as possible from taxes. And in this case a tax which is highly regressive and broadly speaking penalises people who are less well off and would not apply to wealthier areas of the borough.
Yes, I entirely grasp that our streets have become two-thirds carparks. And that there are alternatives to that. Including trees and gardens. Another alternative is cycleways where there are now lines of cars. But raising the cost of parking is simply a way to make money. It does not present and try to persuade people with alternatives.
The shortsighted, right-wing nonentities currently running Haringey will take any extra money but are unlikely to spend it on greening our streets. Even if they did so they wouldn't have the slightest whisper of a hint of clue about how to keep the newly created flower beds, pocket parks and swales etc free of dumping and litter.
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As we saw in Harringay during the closure of Wightman Rd, litter and dumping dropped off a cliff. Through traffic causes rubbish, who knew?
The fact that motor vehicles spend 96% of their lives parked is testament to what they really are, litter themselves. They take up space that children used to play in and deliveries were made to.
It is so typical of the left to first think that if a garden is provided for the peasants then someone will have to be employed to maintain it. You often accuse the council of being right-wing but they way they jump on any residents who seek to do gardening on the public realm is more left wing.
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Calling parked cars "litter" conceals their real purpose. Aren't they are something like a blend of privately owned bus and a mini-caravan? Plus extra (mobile) rooms?
Yes, parked cars turn streets into carparks. I recommend that anyone who wants to see the size of the problem uses the aerial view of Google Earth to assess the scary reality of how much land is filled by them. Though it also shows you how much genuine green space there is between and behind houses. Though being rapidly turned into back-lot hutch-homes and garages.
But charging more to use street "carparks" doesn't, it seems to me, automatically free up the streets for children's play and for gardens. Unless perhaps - and this is where your Wightman Road example applies - unless roads are closed.
I've no information about litter and dumping in Wightman, but I can assure you that a random walk in any direction from my home for, say, twenty minutes would spot litter and dumping enough to spend many times as long reporting it. And much of that is likely to be from local traders, residents, and landlords; not from passing traffic.
To my mind there is nothing "left-wing" about Haringey Council's refusal to welcome or work with residents who wish to improve the public realm. Closed-minded and authoritarian? Sure. Saying the term "co-production" without knowing what it means, yep!
Leftwing in my own definition includes cooperative principles and practice. It starts from notions of the community not from the fiat of Dear Leaders.
By contrast in our top-down Council there are always 101 reasons why the bureaucrats are always always right. (Though sometimes they are right.) And 101 reasons why residents are always always wrong. (Though sometimes they are wrong.)
Our Council even has a special 101-style room where they take councillors and threaten them with the Party whip.
And here, too, the number 101 has a third important meaning - indicating an inability to learn.
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Permalink Reply by JJ B on
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Also e.g in the east of BG ward the parking restrictions are for 2 x 2 hours so they don't 'contribute' as much as those whose restrictions are 8-18.30 Mon to Sat or even including Sunday.
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Exactly JJ. There are winners and there are losers. Among the winners are those living in streets where residents opted quite reasonably for a two hour restriction. Knowing or assessing that 2 hours would probably deter much of the commuter parking near a station.
Elsewhere there are areas where the consultation showed people wanted much longer.
The latter are going to be heavily stung by this inept, inequitable and ill-considered scheme.
On the other hand, next year we - possibly you too? - seem likely to become part of the greater Spursville carpark. In due course their greedy exploitative machine aims at a 365 days a year leisure destination. That's what it said on the billboards.
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There will be a U2 concert in that stadium and Bono will come on stage asking all the people gazing down from the tower blocks to buy some merchandise.
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So?
And all people in the stadium commercial businesses will be paying towards the profits of the stadium. Most of which may mysteriously and inexplicably end up in the bank accounts of the 1%.
Some of the people inside the stadium may be filling the parking spaces in local roads. Or perhaps cramming into the stations and making it harder for any residents to come and go.
We visited Manchester to see leisure-led regeneration in action, near the Etihad stadium. A band called "One Direction" were about to perform. We were told the tram service was suspended because of the crush. There were lots of people selling merchandise and lots of security heavies trying to stop them.John, if you want to save up and buy a flat luxury exclusive apartment next to Spurs stadium in order to listen to super-amplified Bono, that's your choice.
For some very strange reason it's not the preference of the Muswell Hill Colonial Administration. (In the same way I don't think too many of them send their kids to the academies in Tottenham. Do unto others but look after yourselves a lot better.)
Why is this so? It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside a free lunch.
Tottenham Hotspur's Commitment to Tottenham (Hotspur) is unswerving. Shortly after they got their first Stadium planning permission they applied to get the Stratford Olympic Stadium.
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P.S. Please take a look at Neil deMause's website Field of Schemes.
P.P.S Take a walk on the wild side and breathe the dust in the air outside the stadium where work continues 24 hours. Go at night and imagine what it's like trying to sleep
As the trucks come and go.
Spurs directors dreaming of merch to go.
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Where I work is a building site all around so I do sympathise. I was being extremely sarcastic about U2.
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John, at least to me your sarcasm doesn't come over on the webpage.
I arrived late to the critiques of Gates, Bono and many others. So I'm still trying - probably hopelessly - to catch up by reading stuff which makes sense. Not just sense about what happens in poorer countries, but the links with the false solutions pursued by right-wingers here. -
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Not foreign...just a locally based predator, specialising in disregarding the wishes of local residents and destroying the local architectural heritage and buying loads of property around the area for propoerty speculation.
Such a pity that they were not 'allowed' to go to Stratford and the land used for a proper, mixed use, major redevelopement!
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