Johnny Brown
Well-Known Member
Agree with Mark20 and Nige. What we need is some sort of pop-up car park that normally is barely there but when required has massive capacity. Remarkably this used to exist in the form of verges - when I first moved to Sheffield in the late nineties you could park on most of the verges around the Eastern Edges, without causing problems. Almost all of it has now been shut down - hundreds and hundreds of spaces. Initially this was in the form of bunds, more recently unnecessary double yellows. What they should have done was bund the odd soft/ narrow bit and reinforce the rest of the verges in a low-key manner, plus some judicious double yellows and we wouldn't have a problem.
Having wasted many hours as a climbing advocate trying to improve this situation I've got a better understanding of it than most. The control over it is spread between three authorities - Highways Authority, DCC, and the Peak Park. They don't work together well (barely talk), and for the last twenty years mostly operating in a falling-budget short-sighted fire-fighting situation.
First, I think it was HA that erected miles of bunds because they didn't want the cost of maintaining eroding verges, with no consultation. This pushed the problem into less suitable areas. Meanwhile PDNPA were rolling out charges to all their car parks because a consultant, who didn't consult any stakeholders, thought it was no-brainer to charge for parking. That pushed more people onto the few verges left, which got hammered. Then we had Covid, which brought more people, so we got loads of double yellows in the hope they'd magically go away again.
TLDR - big picture is an increasing population with increasing car ownership increasingly want to visit the countryside, against a steadily reduction in the availability of parking. Then this weekend, the car parks are unusable. What the fuck is anyone supposed to do? Personally, I find this blaming of the individuals a horrible Daily Mail-style reaction that for some reason seems always seems popular in Britain. Simple but wrong, them not us, never look at the big picture, just suggest that the general public are shitbags.
Having wasted many hours as a climbing advocate trying to improve this situation I've got a better understanding of it than most. The control over it is spread between three authorities - Highways Authority, DCC, and the Peak Park. They don't work together well (barely talk), and for the last twenty years mostly operating in a falling-budget short-sighted fire-fighting situation.
First, I think it was HA that erected miles of bunds because they didn't want the cost of maintaining eroding verges, with no consultation. This pushed the problem into less suitable areas. Meanwhile PDNPA were rolling out charges to all their car parks because a consultant, who didn't consult any stakeholders, thought it was no-brainer to charge for parking. That pushed more people onto the few verges left, which got hammered. Then we had Covid, which brought more people, so we got loads of double yellows in the hope they'd magically go away again.
TLDR - big picture is an increasing population with increasing car ownership increasingly want to visit the countryside, against a steadily reduction in the availability of parking. Then this weekend, the car parks are unusable. What the fuck is anyone supposed to do? Personally, I find this blaming of the individuals a horrible Daily Mail-style reaction that for some reason seems always seems popular in Britain. Simple but wrong, them not us, never look at the big picture, just suggest that the general public are shitbags.