The Chairman of the Bury St Edmunds Chamber of Commerce, Rick Wildridge, was quoted on the front page of the East Anglian Daily Times yesterday, calling for the introduction of a permanent Park & Ride in Bury St Edmunds.

He suggested, quite rightly, that more of the £400,000 raised from on street parking in Bury should be spent in Bury, rather than elsewhere in Suffolk. However, the Park & Ride debate is far more complex than came across in the East Anglian article.

Let me first state that I am, in principle, in favour of a permanent Park & Ride solution for our town. The reason for this is not the often cited lack of parking – car parks in the town are rarely full and it is only at peak times such as Christmas that any real strain is seen. Even then the car parks are rarely at capacity for more than an hour or so. This, in itself, is not enough to warrant the introduction of Park & Ride nor make it financially viable (even with the £400,000 from on street parking). The reason I support Park & Ride in the long term is not due to insufficient car park capacity, it is simply because I don’t believe we have the infrastructure to cope ever increasing traffic flows. The problem isn’t with getting parked, it will rest, as traffic in the town increases, with getting to a car park.

The solutions to this are twofold. Long term, Park & Ride will become more and more feasible and should remain an ultimate ambition but I will come back to this subject in a moment. In the short term, we need to look at the town as a whole and see what improvements can be made to the town’s infrastructure to ease traffic flows – the signalisation of Tayfen Road is just one of these solutions. There is some excellent work being done by the Borough and County Councils but I have, for some time now, argued for the creation of a traffic management plan for the entire town rather than a more piecemeal approach where junctions are upgraded as and when the funding is available. This is an argument I will continue to pursue – it is only through looking at the town as a whole that we can begin to address problems with congestion.

Returning to the subject of Park & Ride, the difficulty is this: while people can park all day in the town centre for a couple of pounds they will do so. On the average weekday and weekend we have adequate parking and, despite the inevitable outcry, when there is an increase it remains comparatively affordable. Given the choice between paying £1.50 for a Park & Ride ticket and £1.90 to park on Parkway or Ram Meadow all day, the vast majority of people would choose to park more centrally and pay a little more for the privilege. It wouldn’t even attract the casual shoppers popping into town for 2 hours when they could park in the most central location for less than £2 or, on a shorter visit, on street for £1.60.

Where Park & Ride works elsewhere it is because town centre parking is prohibitively priced and reasonably scarce. For it to be a success the town centre parking charges would need to be such that most people would opt for Park & Ride. For example, a day’s parking in the Grand Arcade in Cambridge is close to £15. Furthermore, if Park & Ride is a success it would mean that some of the town centre car parks would fall into disuse – strangely the success of Park & Ride would probably see some town centre car parks (most likely the more outlying ones) close.

Some others, with whom I have discussed this topic, go further – they argue that for Park & Ride to work people need to be forced out of driving into the town centre and this would mean not only prohibitively priced town centre parking but also the closure of some car parks from the very outset. There is also the problem that we do not have the capacity for bus lanes on our roads; what use would Park & Ride be if the buses simply got stuck in traffic? The natural argument goes that a successful Park & Ride would free up space on the roads but this simply gives more weight to the argument that it would mean the need to force far fewer people to drive into the town centre on a daily basis.

This is, as I have said, a complex debate and personally I see the short term solution in improving traffic infrastructure in the town with Park & Ride as an ultimate goal.

To say we need a Park & Ride is easy. To say how we would make it a success is far more difficult – I’d be interested to see if the Chamber of Commerce would support its introduction if it meant fewer town centre parking spaces and large price increases. That is a much more difficult case to make.