roadtester wrote:c2R wrote:Andy33gmail wrote:I wonder if anyone uses Cambridge's ones now they're no longer free?
This was mainly done to penalise NHS staff who walk from Babraham Road park and ride to work at Addenbrooke's (owing to parking at Addenbrooke's itself being prohibitively expensive).
It's still quite a walk from Babraham Road P&R to Addenbrookes! I suspect that there's an emerging problem with the rapidly developing biomedical campus. Road and public transport links are already inadequate and the same goes for parking.
Speaking more generally, I think the Cambridge park and ride system works well. There are sites on all of the main approaches and the facilities are pretty good. Milton, the one I use most, is modern with plenty of spaces and a mini-MSA style building with coffee and sweet machines, toilets, copies of local free papers etc. where you can wait in the warm for the bus.
The parking charges have produced a bit of a drop in custom if the local rags are to be believed but at £1 for up to eighteen hours they're hardly extortionate, and the first hour is free. Milton and Babraham Road also have fairly reliable electric car charging points, and I've often used the free hour of parking at Babraham in particular if I want a quick "peace of mind" top-up for my car if I'm going to somewhere like Stansted, which would otherwise be slightly challenging range-wise.
Although the buses don't run at all hours, the Cambridge P&Rs are open and accessible to cars 24 hours a day, which gives some flexibility if you get caught out bus-wise - at least you can get a lift/taxi/walk there to retrieve your car. It's also pretty handy if you need an EV top-up late at night.
The problem with the £1 parking charge at the Cambridge sites is the ludicrous way it was implemented. Instead of a simple system such as £1 coin on entry they introduced a complicated parking machine based on ANPR. It works this way.
1) As you drive through the barrier a digital photo of your car is taken and the number plate read
2) You park your car and find a ticket machine that is actually working
3) You type in the first 3 digits of your car reg no and select your car from the list of photographs retrieved
4) You then select your ticket type, parking only , P&R or Ride Only
5) You now select how many people are included
6) You pay - note the machines don't give change so most people pay by card
There are not many machines working so the queues rapidly buildup at peak periods and while picking out you car is easy on a nice sunny day, try it on a dark wet winter morning and its lots of fun, especially if the ANPR is playing up.
The operators, Stagecoach East are going nuts, when first mooted they offered to take over the running of the sites from the council and avoid the charge. Instead business has dropped and remains 15% below the level when the charge came in and the council have decided to start charging them £250,000 per annum for the privilege of running the system. As a result they are now making a loss on the routes and reducing service is a real possibility. The council have also seen $1/2 million drop in revenue instead of the increase they expected. A first rate lesson in how to ruin a good system in fact.