Park and Ride
Posted by DavidM in Driving, Transport | 25 November 2007
I took my family shopping in Winchester yesterday and we tried the city's Park and Ride service for the first time.
Anyone who's visited Winchester will know that traffic and parking in the city is a nightmare. We live about 5 miles outside and rarely go in because it's so bad. If I do travel in I'd rather go by bus but for all four of us that's over £10 a trip.
So yesterday we decided to use the park and ride. It's not entirely environmentally friendly as we have to drive 3 miles to get to the park and ride park, but there's little traffic to that point so we're not sitting there pumping out biodiesel fumes.
The service itself worked extremely well. We were on the bus within 2 minutes of parking, it cost only £2.70 to park there all day and for the return bus trip for 4 of us and was no hassle getting back out of town.
We all agreed we'd use it again rather than driving in, but I still have two problems.
First, it should be cheap enough for us to get the bus from the end of our road into the City - £10 is going to put most families off leaving the car at home.
Second, I think single level car-parks built on greenfield sites is a criminal waste of our limited countryside. Winchester City Council are building a third Park and Ride site on the south of the city now, yet the existing sites could easily accomodate a second level, saving another field from being tarmaced.
