Traffic chaos in Richmond Park has shown how badly wrong the situation has become. It's time the Royal Parks get the park in line with its 'movement strategy' survey findings:
- Approximately 80% of our visitors get to the park by walking, cycling or public transport
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78% of all survey respondents strongly agree or agree that park roads should not be used as commuter routes for motor vehicles.
And yet, what we've seen over and over is long queues caused by rat running and congestion around car parks every sunny week end in summer and sunny days during lockdown.
The parks should:
- close the park to through traffic, period. Many agree with this.
- adopt charges with a steep increase after 3 hours in each car park –except for blue badge holders
- allow vehicular access from the gate adjacent to Robin Hood, Sheen, Kingston and Roehampton gates
- reopen Ladderstile gate for access to Broomfield Wood parking
- instigate a one way from Ham to Richmond for access to Pembroke lodge, looping via the car park (to discourage through traffic) and also to Isabella's plantation disabled car park
- close Pen Ponds car park except for disabled parking
Other options won't work: the Richmond Society is suggesting a fee to enter the park for instance. It's technically feasible, but expensive. The infrastructure costs are non-trivial and the operating fees for boundary pricing can be eye watering: for instance, the London congestion charge operating costs are 36% of its revenues.
And so, given only 20% of park users come by car, it makes sense to simply ban cars and charge parking.
Sometimes I like how a quote can be just flipped on its head, like that one:
