Would you rather? Enforcement or 'no rules' parking
This week Armagh I published an article on ABC Council’s decision to introduce parking enforcement to Friary Road Car Park West.
The article prompted a relatively angry surge of comments... mainly aimed at Council for “driving away business” from the town.
One such comment read: “The traffic wardens are like vultures in Armagh as it is.
“How can ABC council not see that their enforcement on parking has an adverse effect on the local businesses?
“I can’t comprehend how the chamber of commerce in Armagh do not seem to engage with the idea of local shops opening late in the early days December while local restaurants/ cafes in town could open simultaneously to encourage people to shop local while creating a festive atmosphere throughout the month of December. With the late night shopping/free parking.”
Parking enforcement is - and always has been - a gripe. Especially when you find yourself ticketed for overstaying your welcome. Barrack Street - with its short stay of only 30 minutes - is particularly contentious.
But, it’s worth remembering that enforcement does not equate to parking fees.
And with regards to Friary Road Car Park West, we couldn’t help but feel like most readers had perhaps missed the point.
One person did, however, seem to understand the Council’s rationale, adding: “About time. Persons park at Friary Road entrance making vehicles having to mount the pavement to exit the car park.”
The Friary Road Car Park West was an area often grumbled about. Cars would commonly park in areas not designated for parking, which not only made the car park less accessible to through traffic and turning, but also presented a hazard for emergency vehicles.
When they announced their decision to introduce enforcement in the area, the council said: “The car park will remain free to use but all vehicles must be parked appropriately within designated parking bays. Those which are not will be subject to parking enforcement.”
The action will also extend to vehicles parked without displaying a valid disabled badge.
With no prior enforcement in place it became a bit of a lawless no man’s land with regards to parking. Perhaps this is a smaller example of what life would be like in the city as a whole with a ‘no rules’ system in place?
We understand the grumbles with the 30 minute, one hour and two hour parking limits... but it does free up parking for shoppers.
If it wasn’t in place, the spaces would undoubtedly be taken up for eight hours at a time - day in and out - by staff members of high street businesses and offices.
And, while we wouldn’t mind a space outside our front door, it’s not conducive to a healthy high street.
So, let’s circle back to the Friary Road Car Park West issue and open up a bigger conversation... are we for enforcement or against? And, is it beneficial to the high street or not?
Nobody likes a parking ticket, but in Armagh it’s practically a sport to bring your kids along, park on the yellow line for “just a minute,” and dash into the shop, leaving them like meerkats on a swivel to give ample warning of impending redcoats. Grumble all you want about rules, but until we admit our systems weren’t built for how we actually use them, we’ll keep making bad parking decisions—and paying for them in inconvenience, fender benders, and £90 parking tickets.
Parking in a proper spot without paying the fee—or sneaking into a disabled bay—is often seen as the lesser of two evils. It’s 40p for an hour you’re not even going to use, and somehow it feels like a fortune. So if we do pay the ticket price, our act of non-compliance simply shifts to leaving our non-transferable ticket on the kiosk like Katniss Everdeen offering 40p as tribute to the next poor soul.
So, will increased enforcement just send us back to the old yellow-line, mad-dash, honk-if-you-see-red routine? It’s possible—but it’s also possible that adding a bit of humanity to a robotic, faceless, over-infrastructured problem could actually improve attitudes around parking in Armagh. By contrast, I don’t know anyone in Armagh who would gripe about 40p if it were clear where it went. The system is closed at the minute—which means we don’t know where that 40p goes, and honestly, we don’t care. And people who don’t care don’t comply.
Enforced parking by military-clad individuals doesn’t make people care; it makes them angry and erratic. More bureaucracy will only produce more of the same behavior once a workaround is found. Take the bureaucracy out, donate the parking fees to someone like the NSPCA or Autism NI, and suddenly people will start to care about where they park. The answer is self-regulation—by making people care.