Free Parking

Parking charges are they fair or are they just another stealth tax?

What do you think?

If they are a tax then they are extremely regressive ;

1 GBP or 1 USD for one hour may seem reasonable or affordable to someone earning the average salary or above but to someone unwaged, a student , on a low income or retired this could be coming out of their net or low earnings and therefore if they parked for an average of just one hour per day this could cost them in excess of 500 GBP a year in real terms , if they worked part-time and/or had lectures say 4 hours per day their annual salary on minimum wage would be circa 5000 GBP per year gross , OK good news that would be below their nil rate band in the UK but the 1000 GBP in parking charges would represent 20% of their earnings so that 0% tax quickly became a 20% tax !-which is extortionate.

So what is the alternative?

Well free parking is obvious but isn't it already 'free to park ' in allot of places? -

well the answer is yes if you look around - take airport for example expensive parking miles from the airport or free on street parking either walking distance , free bus or £5 taxi fare away - ok maybe more risk but not if you read or watched the tv reports on airport parking maybe not -your choice but surely its better to use public transport where available -

There are all sorts of ways to get 'free parking' or reducing your motoring costs - one is to avoid taking your car into areas where you are charged e.g. use park and ride (these aren't always free which is a rip off but you can easily use your initiative here ) , another is utilise the limited free parking offered by shops and supermarkets by doing some of your shopping there , another way is to to think of the environment and your wallet at the same time so use shank's pony more or cycle and for all our sakes get an Eco car and I don't mean an expensive Prius or Lexus 4x4 there are cars out there that Eco friendly and built in Eastern Europe , the Far East or the 'developing' world (so try to ignore the environmental costs of importing them here! ) that give off less than 120g/km in co2 that cost less than £3k are less than 3yrs old so are cheap to run all do in excess of 50mpg - you are not going to lose much more in depreciation because they've lost 50% of their value already - of course we all want a 'nice' sporty car with the 'right' image or the ill perceived safety of the 4x4 but with the cost of fuel hovering around the £1/litre mark you are not only hurting the environment when you get in your gas guzzling average car but your own wallet a typical daily 30 urban mile trip could easily cost c£7 or more in fuel alone - only half that in an Eco car (wow that's paid for for your all day parking already! ) times that by say 300 days (9000 miles pa ) add the the fact that your insurance will be lower and annual road tax licence only £35pa for a B banded car - you could save yourself £100pm off your motoring costs add that to giving up smoking on July 1st and you'll save enough money to go on a round the world trip and undo all the carbon savings you just made!

I may be preaching to the converted here cause I have just looked at the SMMT 2007 pdf

and I was impressed to see that in the UK we have gone from buying 3500 B band cars in the year 2000 to over 100,000 in 2006 - its still dwarfed by the 1,000,000 sales in the D and E band and its those people that have a choice to a) help themselves and their wallet by choosing a B band car and thus in effect giving themselves 'free' parking and b) help the environment which will be good for us all.

Someone please tell Jeremy Clarkson when they see him to stop promoting gaz guzzling cars all the time! , I'm still waiting for my apology for telling me there was no such car as an Audi A5 when I asked him what he thought of it last year!?

I'll stop ranting now but does puzzle me is why the most economical car that I could find on sale is actually not on sale in the UK only as a rare import and thus making it expensive to insure the Smart fortwo diesel does up to 90mpg it only emits 88g/km in co2 - 16g/km less than the all conquering oh so eco prius which has sold 1/2 million in the last 2 years - the smart 799 cdi has been available for over 7 years and yet its not available - it would be in band A - which means car tax would be free (there are no cars in the UK for sale in band A - thanks Gordon! ) - if you read the column to the right there are lots of links about the smart - I find it incredible that the car has has been such a slow burner it still looks as radical now as it did 10 years ago - it was so far ahead of it time - most journeys only have one person in the car , two at the most - so why have we bought so many 7 seat cars recently!? (me included!) - the smart city car has only just got the go-ahead to be sold in the US in 2008 most cars would have been axed by now and replaced by a new model - if anyone knows why or when we can buy the CDI here in RHD please let me know.