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Lift this tax
To Councillor Mervyn Caplan, cabinet member for finance Westminster City Council
• I read your response to criticisms about the recent introduction of a parking fee for motorcycles with interest.
This scheme is a first as far as I know and a worrying and unwelcome first at that. It has caused a lot of anger among many different types of riders, many of whom come into Westminster to work. I frequently do, as a musician working in the various theatres and opera houses in the West End.
Like many others I come into the borough to shop. I rode into Westminster on Saturday, for example, to shop and had to pay for the privilege at 4pm. Why charge at all and why charge on a Saturday afternoon?
It can only be as way of making money, because the West End is not overparked on a Saturday afternoon and you provide nothing for the money that you formerly provided free of charge. It cannot cost much at all to paint a few white lines in the road and write the words “motorcycles only”.
There are no expensive meters to install and maintain and the parking attendants don’t need to bother themselves with us if parked with in the bays.
A lot of people took to two wheels, of all sorts, not just because of the introduction of a congestion charge. It was also because of the aggressively policed and prohibitively expensive parking charges for cars in Westminster, and because public transport is still unreliable, hugely expensive and extremely unpleasant to use.
Bikes free up road space for other vehicles, are less polluting and at least five can park in the space taken by one car.
No motorcyclist I know believes the charge of £1.50 per day won’t soar in the near future, whatever assurances are given at the moment when people are complaining so vigorously. Two, three, or four years down the line, those charges will go up considerably, as we will be seen as an easy touch to raise some cash, if other motorists are continually priced out and deterred from driving into Westminster.
You may have provided more spaces, but there are still too few. I don’t expect to have to spend ages riding around wasting time and fuel to find a space near where I need to be, as happens now.
Scrap this tax as soon as the trial period is up. We are not the problem in respect of congestion, the more of us that ride in on bikes etc instead of cars, the more road space there is for other four-wheeled road users who may have to drive, and the more seats we free up on overcrowded public transport.
You should be encouraging us to ride in, and not be putting us off, with this mean and petty tax.
Paul DL Allen
Address supplied
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