Proceed with caution on parking ban

JUST when you thought it was safe to go back into town …

Along comes news that, for some, will make it a whole lot more difficult.

Whether this is the right time to press ahead with more pedestrianisation and ban on-street parking for shoppers is debatable.

In the long run, it has to be desirable to encourage walking and cycling. It’s an absolute no-brainer. If you are young enough and fit enough, that is.

More bus use, too, if there were enough regular, reliable buses with fares lower than car park charges. And that’s a big if.

But cutting back on taxi spaces? With a rapidly increasing elderly population? Surely if anything, you’d need more, not fewer?

How will it affect the market? Have the traders been consulted? Even for the not-so-elderly (me!), if you’re lugging bags of heavy fruit and veg, it can feel like a long way to the nearest car park. If you have a car.

At the same time, you’re making it harder for people to bring their own vehicles in anyway.

That’s a huge deterrent to the kind of people who might well use on-street parking briefly to pick up a heavy purchase or drop off a charity shop donation. Has anyone actually asked Oxfam, Mencap, our Hospice and the rest what they think about this?

What about the taxi drivers, incidentally? Haven’t we got enough unemployment right now?

Theirs isn’t an easy living anyway, and it’s going to get a whole lot tougher, with the city centre’s diminishing retail offering and with our entertainment venues and restaurants still closed.

I don’t really buy into the argument that this is about enabling pedestrians and cyclists to keep a safer distance from each other.

I can see why some councillors might have thought it was a good idea to use the coronavirus disruption as an opportunity to push ahead with their long-held ambition to bring in environmental improvements, not least to our air quality.

Half of me is with them on this. Make a fresh start!

The other half wonders whether this is the right time to risk measures that might well, in the short term at least, deter some shoppers and hurry along more job losses.

It sounds as though there’s some doubt about whether all of these ideas can be funded at once.

And maybe that’s a good thing. A gradual approach to these changes, with wide public consultation, might be wise.