Parking for profit
Parking in Liverpool has been agitating many people for a while now.
The anger over the council's proposal to extend charges from 6pm to 8pm, is not likely to subside with today's revelation that the council is making ã2m a year profit from parking.
The council insists it ploughs the money back into transport schemes.
The proposal to extend the hours of charging (to raise ã60,000) is currently the subject of a council inquiry, which had its second sitting this week.
Nobody likes having to pay for parking, but it is generally accepted as part of modern day life.
The council could have raised the ã60,000 by increasing the price of parking between normal hours of 8am to 6pm, and would probably have netted far more cash than it was seeking to get.
And what's more although there would have been complaints, it would not have generated any where near the same number column inches, and would have been long forgotten about.
The revelation that the authority already makes ã2m a year profit, makes the proposal to raise the peanut like figure of ã60,000 even more extraordinary.
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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Didn't I read somewhere that Liverpool wanted to continue to be a cultural and enterprising city?
How does this apparently claimed ambition for Liverpool stack up against the intention to ensure most people don't stay in, or come into, the city after 6 pm?
It's hardly as if the present evening / night-time public transport service will make the need for cars obsolete.
These charges will almost certainly harm the 'open till 8 pm' status of the retail city centre - and they will without any doubt at all harm the evening arts and cultural economy. This proposal feels like a fine on going to the theatre or a concert.