Gloucestershire County Council has introduced technology to prevent misuse of the park & ride site at Arle Court, which is designed to ease congestion in Cheltenham. The P&R site has 576 parking spaces, but people wanting to park & ride regularly have found it difficult to find a space due to motorists parking for free and then walking off site to their place of work, rather than paying to use the bus service into Cheltenham town centre. The increasingly number of ‘park &

The arrival of self-parking cars will have a profound effect on the way in which car parks are designed, managed and used. These were among the messages that came out of Parking & Property 2019, which took place in London on 16 May. Around 130 people gathered in London for this year’s conference, which explored trends shaping the sector’s business plans such as connected vehicle technologies, new national regulations covering parking land and the risks posed by fires in parking s

Swansea’s two remaining park & ride sites are to lose their bespoke buses and see staffing reduced as the city council seeks to cut costs. On the plus side, customers will be offered direct buses to more locations, including the major hospital and university campus at Singleton. The authority closed its loss-making and under-used Fforestfach P&R site in 2016. Now officers are tasked with cutting £200,000 a year from the subsidy for the sites at Fabian Way, east of the city ce

A park & ride facility for a Welsh hospital will be closed on 30 June, despite objections from users and politicians. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) introduced the facility in October 2014 for Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, the general hospital for central North Wales. This followed major construction works at the hospital, which reduced the space available for parking on the hospital campus. Visitors and staff were invited to use the car park of a vacant factory, about a mile from th

A new car park has been opened at Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire to meet an increased demand for spaces by local commuters. The 112-space surface facility is located close to the main entrance of the station, which is managed by London Northwestern Railway. Car Park 2 has been created by parking company Saba in partnership with GHW Developments Users can purchase daily, weekly and weekend tickets. Customers can pay for parking either at pay & display machines, using the Saba Parking UK

Plans for the redevelopment of Taunton station have moved a step further as Great Western Railway (GWR) and construction company John Sisk & Son finalised contracts for the multi-million pound regeneration scheme. GWR is working with Somerset West and Taunton Council and the Heart of South West Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to deliver the scheme. Improvements include a new multi-storey car park, ticket office and entrance as well as additional bike spaces and improved bus and taxi int

Britannia Parking has opened a new car park at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight on land made available by ferry operator Red Funnel. The Well Road car park is the only long-term and overnight car park in East Cowes. The 48-space site will provide parking for residents, tourists and visitors as well as for commuters and ferry passengers. Red Funnel carries 2.3m passengers and 800,000 vehicles on its ferry route between Southampton and East Cowes every year. East Cowes mayor Peter Lloyd officiall

New multi-function touchscreen terminals have been installed at three park & ride sites in Durham. The Cale Web Terminal (CWT) Touch terminals from Flowbird have been acquired by the scheme operator NSL for use at the Belmont, Howlands Farm and Sniperley park & ride sites. The Touch terminals offer site users the ability to order and pay for multiple tickets in a single transaction. Previously, users requiring two or more tickets had to repeat the purchase process multiple times. The n

A new car park has been opened at a steam railway’s station just in time for the start of its 2019 season. The Broadway Railway Station car park officially opened on 5 March in the presence of civic dignitaries and volunteers from the Wychavon area and the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway (GWSR). The GWSR reopened Broadway station over Easter 2018 after almost 60 years of closure. Since then it has carried more than 144,000 passengers, an increase of over 42% compared with the p

Leeds City Council’s proposed Stourton park & ride project has been given the go-ahead after changes were made to the design of its landscaping. The park & ride site will provide for 1,200 cars on land between Hunslet Cemetery and Junction 7 of the M621. The site will be served by electric buses running into the city centre via Hunslet Road, which will be modified to create a dedicated bus lane. The planning application was agreed in principle at a panel meeting in January, but c

A major expansion of park & ride facilities at railway stations in south-east Wales is on the cards, as part of a proposed £35m “Metro Plus” package. Work on the region’s long-awaited £734m Metro project – principally electrification of local railways – has begun but will not be completed until 2024. Now the Cardiff Capital Region, a grouping of 10 local authorities, has earmarked £15m for ancillary Metro Plus projects that could be delivered

HUBER Car Park Systems International has been operating throughout Europe for more than 10 years. To date, HUBER Group has completed more than 220 projects in Germany and neighbouring European countries, especially in the UK. In 2017, HUBER won the British Parking Award for Best New Car Park with the Rose Lane multi-storey car park in Norwich, England, and its Music Box multi-storey car park in Hayes was shortlisted in the 2019 awards. HUBER specialises in car park design and build. Its system

Contemporary and 1960s car parks, school streets schemes, charity fundraisers, cycle hubs and digital payment systems make up the eclectic list winners at the British Parking Awards 2019. The British Parking Awards have been presented annually by Parking Review magazine since 2002, and the awards ceremony organised by Landor LINKS is the social highlight of the parking calendar.The ceremony was compered by the comedian Shappi Khorsandi, who revealed that in being evicted first on I’m a Cel

NCP is working with Greater Anglia to roll out automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology across 20 rail station car parks. The car park operator says its aim is to give customers greater control over how and when they pay for their parking by removing the need for cash and by offering choice when it comes to electronic payment methods. The ticketless ANPR technology will allow customers to pay for their parking online anytime up until midnight the day after their visit on the Great A

The developer behind a new village community near Harrogate in Yorkshire has unveiled plans to reopen a historic railway station as a park & ride facility. Flaxby Park has acquired Goldsborough’s former station house and intends to re-launch the site as Flaxby Parkway Station. The parkway will form part of the wider Flaxby Park scheme, which will see new homes developed on a disused golf course. The planning application for the development includes 2,750 homes, two primary schools, a

Traffic and parking management professionals will be gathering in Manchester during January to discuss issues such as the effective management of the kerbside, preparing Clean Air Zones, creating safer school streets, regulating pavement parking and the case for workplace parking levies. The Traffic + Parking conference on 22 January 2019 will be a forum in which parking and traffic management professionals from both the public and private sectors can gather to discuss the operational issues th

The design of car parks is the subject of an exhibition in London staged by architecture and urban design studio Studio Egret West. The practice decided to make car parks the theme of the latest show at its studios in Clerkenwell because it thinks they are a neglected and misunderstood building type. Multi-Stories: Let’s Talk About Car Parks looks at how imaginative design and planning can create parking structures that are both functional and attractive.  Cecilia Lindström, ass

Italian high-speed rail network Italo has renewed its contract with parking reservation specialist ParkCloud. Over the past 12 months Italo has seen growth in bookings across the 25 rail stations Italo covered by ParkCloud. Italo customers can browse and compare features online through the Italotreno Parking white label portal before reserving their parking alongside their travel. Francesco Fiore, chief of quality and industrial product development at Italo, said: “Italo’s service

Landowners, developers, car park operators and constructors have to make investment decisions and we have to make practical decisions. They are asking what is happening right now and what does the future hold? There is currently a lot of uncertainty in the sector, but there are three main trends that I see having a profound effect on car park design. Firstly, how we use cars is changing. We’re seeing far more car-pooling going on and car ownership falling. Secondly, the car industry itself

Bristol City Council has suggested introducing a workplace parking levy or a congestion charge to fund significant investments in public transport infrastructure. The prospect of new levies on motorists is raised in the Bristol Transport Strategy, which sets out how the city’s council plans to tackle challenges affecting journeys such as traffic congestion, growth in housing and jobs, inequality and health problems caused by inactivity and air pollution. A Congestion Task Group has helped

While environmental issues do not rank high in the overall list of motorists’ major concerns, a large number are increasingly worried about the impact of vehicles on local air quality, according to the RAC Report on Motoring 2018. Only 12% of the 1,800 drivers interviewed said the environmental impact of motoring is a top-four concern this year, although this is up from 9% in 2017. However, 44% said they are more concerned about the impact of vehicles on local air quality than they were 12

Parking in the United States has always lagged many, many years behind Europe for many reasons. One is that Americans do not like a lot of change. That is all about to change because we are living in an era of disruption. What does disruption look like from the United States’ perspective? Disruption with regard to parking and mobility has come from the outside. Indeed, it is rare that an industry gets disrupted from the inside out.  Uber and Lyft have completely disrupted the taxi in

Transport for West Midlands has introduced new video surveillance technology across stations and car parks to keep passengers and their cars safe. The video surveillance system is used to monitor activity at over 50 railway stations, 11 bus stations, three Midland Metro park & ride sites and the main No.11 bus route around Birmingham. The project has seen around 850 Wisenet cameras installed by Total Integrated Solutions (TIS) on behalf of Transport for West Midlands, which was set up by th

The 2019 edition of the British Parking Awards is up and running. Now in its 18th year, the competition encourages both public and private sector organisations to nominate people and projects that represent the best in parking management, design and innovation. The awards encompass both the on-street and off-street sides of the parking sector. The diverse nature of the parking sector means that the competition has categories that cover the design and upkeep of buildings, as well as ground-break

Penguin Cruise Parking, which provides a park & ride service for holiday-makers sailing from Southampton docks, has received a Park Mark under the Safer Parking Scheme. Penguin Cruise Parking’s operation is based at the Marchwood Industrial Estate. Helen Cator, managing director of Penguin Parking, said: “As well as looking for great value, many passengers have told us they check to see if their chosen car park is Park Mark awarded before they book. It means something to them to

A decade has passed since the Welsh Government decided that parking should be free at all NHS hospitals in Wales. Only now has the commitment been met in full, with the abolition of parking charges at the largest hospital, the University Hospital of Wales (UHW). The reason that UHW still charged for parking was because this was an aspect of the hospital’s contract with Indigo, which concluded on 4 June.  Parking on the site is now managed for the Cardiff and Vale University Health Bo

Canterbury City Council has launched a ‘park & pedal’ scheme at one of its park & ride sites. The council is offering free parking at its Wincheap site for people who then cycle into the city rather than take the bus. A new 28-space cycle compound, which can only be accessed via a key card and is available 24/7, has been built to provide secure storage for bikes. Maintenance equipment is also available. There are two signposted routes into the city: the Chartham to Canterbu

Hammerson has put its £1.4bn plan to extend north London’s Brent Cross shopping centre on hold. Hammerson, which owns Brent Cross with Standard Life, feels the currently turbulent retail market means the expansion plans would be too risky. The project, which would have seen the mall almost double and size and receive a new multi-storey car park, had been due to start on site in the summer and complete in 2022. Hammerson chief executive David Atkins made the announcement when reveal

CitiPark is to install a ticketless and barrier-less parking solution at a car park serving commuters from Rickmansworth railway station in Hertfordshire. The car park has a capacity of 140 spaces and is located adjacent to the station, which with both underground and overground line access makes it popular with commuters travelling in and out of London.  CitiPark has managed parking the site since 2016 and completed the purchase of the freehold in June last year.  APT Skidata will

Eight ultra-low emission Hybrid Electric buses are now serving Leeds’ Elland Road and Temple Green park & ride sites. It is anticipated the hybrid vehicles will deliver significant fuel and C02 improvements and help reduce air pollution in the city.  The new vehicles form part of a First Leeds’ commitment to invest £71m in 284 new ultra-low emission buses for Leeds by the end of 2020. The Wrightbus HEV bus uses a parallel hybrid system that captures braking energy th

The Swedish city of Gothenburg is undergoing an intense development phase. In the coming 20 years, the city’s population will grow by almost a third. The construction period will entail major challenges, including congested roads and heavy queues in rush hour.  Public transit agency Västtrafik wants to tell people about the problems and show that public transport is part of the solution. Lars Backström, CEO of Västtrafik, says: “The traffic situation will be heav

A 300-space car park opened to the public at Market Harborough station in Leicestershire on the Midland Main Line on 18 June. The opening of the new car park has enabled the existing one to close to allow for a new track alignment. Straightening the track will increase line speed enabling quicker journeys and platform extensions to cater for longer trains with more seats. The new car park will increase in size to 500 spaces once the track work has been completed. Motorists were asked not

Cities across the globe are starting to think how they will accommodate and service fleets of autonomous electric vehicles as well as new shared mobility services that include not just cars and cycles but micro-buses. And besides thinking the highway and street-scene will be transformed, public authorities may soon have to look at what is happening in the air because, if Uber has its way, flying taxis may become a reality. Uber Technologies has been a disruptive influence on urban mobility scene

Demand for housing is far outstripping supply, leading to a severe shortage of suitable accommodation for key workers, young professionals and first-time buyers in towns and cities across the UK. Could the solution be to build homes on existing city centre car parks and hard-standing areas? This is an idea advocated by architect Bill Dunster, who has come up with a housing concept called the ZEDpod.  Dunster wants to provide homes for younger key workers that are close to their workplace a

If Hercules had faced a thirteenth labour, it surely would have been parking in a crowded town centre on a Saturday afternoon. For many, parking conjures up visions of endless searching, pricey car parks and frantic dashes to feed the pay & display machine to avoid a penalty. Those days are coming to an end. A new wave of technology is ripping through the parking industry, changing the status quo and profoundly altering the parking journey and changing consumer behaviours. What does this mea

Donald Shoup, the US academic widely regarded as the world’s leading thinker on parking issues, is the editor of a new book looking at the relationship between cars and cities. Parking and the City is a follow-up to Shoup’s 1996 book The High Cost of Free Parking, which showed how city parking policies often prohibit walkability, damage the economy, raise housing costs, and penalise people who cannot afford or choose not to own a car. Using a combination of analysis and creative th

New retail units and a parking deck will be created at Hempstead Valley shopping centre near Gillingham in Kent. While the new parking deck will make up for some of the lost spaces there will be a net loss of 50 spaces. Medway Council’s planning committee has approved a 24,500 square metre extension. Five large new units will be built on part of the existing car park. The shopping centre is owned by the British Airways pension scheme and features Argos, Boots, Sainsbury’s M&am

New park & ride spaces are being created as part of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s £32m programme of station car park extensions. The Station Car Park Extensions programme seeks to increase car parking capacity at selected stations. Two parking projects have already been completed at Fitzwilliam station and South Elmsall stations and more are in the pipeline. A surface level car park extension costing £700,000 at Fitzwilliam rail station has supplemented the exis

Secure cycle parking areas are being rolled out across the Dutch rail system. The Netherlands has a long-standing culture of commuters using cycling as the initial part of their journey, with 400,000 passengers using their bikes to travel to the station every day, according to NS Stations figures. The rail station operator has appointed Siemens to improve cycle parking at 47 railway stations by installing self-service cycle parking solution. These will provide cyclists with a s

The British Parking Awards 2018 attracted around 100 entries from across the country, from which a short list of finalists has been selected. The entries have been assessed by a panel of experts made up of parking managers, transport and parking consultants, representatives from the major parking associations and bodies representing the motoring and freight sectors. The winners will be revealed at a gala lunch to be held in London on 9 March. To see the list of finalists click here The diverse

Open Parking has appointed Justin Ben-Nathan as business development manager. Open Parking is the operational arm of Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions. Its portfolio includes to hospitals, universities, retail parks, shopping malls, leisure centres, transport hubs, residential and office developments. Ben-Nathan was formerly national sales executive at APCOA Parking, where he previously held a number of business development and commercial management roles working with clients such as Networ

The winners of the British Parking Awards 2018 will be revealed at a gala ceremony held in London during March by the comedian Lucy Porter. The competition is free to enter and, as is now traditional, the deadline for submissions has been extended to Monday 8 January. According to Time Out, Lucy Porter “is one of the most talented comics on the circuit”. Having had 11 Edinburgh Fringe shows and international tours, Lucy is a well-established and loved comedian. On TV, she has

Parking at Kemble Station in Gloucestershire has been doubled following the completion of work on a new car park officially opened by Princess Anne. The £1.4m works have provided 333 additional spaces at a new car park that was opened by the Princess Royal driving through a ribbon at a special event to mark the occasion. A plaque was also unveiled at the station. Kemble Station previously had 335 long-stay spaces plus four short-stay bays.  Ben Caswell, finance director at Great We

The winners of the British Parking Awards 2018 will be revealed on Friday 8 March by the comedian Lucy Porter. Parking Review launched the British Parking Awards in 2002. Now in their 17th year, the annual competition encourages both public and private sector organisations to nominate people and projects that represent the best in parking management, design and innovation. The competition is 

A new car park reception building has been opened at Bristol Airport. The building is the centrepiece of a £2.5m investment in the Silver Zone car park. The reception building has been expanded to meet expected demand next summer.  Thousands of people use the car park reception building each day. It also hosts up to 50 staff from the airport’s ground transportation team. The new two-storey structure has been designed to create a more positive first and last impression for passe

In a world where customer experience is king, airlines have been improving their aircraft, whilst airport operators have focused on terminals. Both have invested heavily in services to make the journey better, but often the start and end of a journey is forgotten – the parts that can be the most stressful, and can make or break the overall experience. That is why car parks are a vital element in the overall experience. Car parking is an important revenue earner, as the annual parking earn

A property services company says it has identified around 10,500 car parks in the UK’s towns and cities that could be developed to accommodate over 350,000 homes, enough to house around one million people. “Over the past 15 years several crucial demographic changes have begun to take hold which are having a dramatic impact on the adequate provision of housing in the UK,” said Nick Whitten, JLL’s director of UK research. “A trend towards urban living has disproport

Holiday Extras has acquired Purple Parking’s brand and website after the airport parking specialist went into administration. Purple Parking, which operates off-airport car parks around the UK, called in administrators after being amassing debts in the region of £2m. The deal was completed via a pre-packaged administration sale following Purple Parking’s inability to secure a buyer for the whole business. Duff and Phelps are now the appointed administrators. Established in 1

Q: How will self-driving cars change the way in which towns and cities manage parking? Q: How can local authorities create electric vehicle charging facilities that are both environmentally and financially sustainable? Q: Will local authority parking teams be key players in tackling poor air quality caused by vehicle pollution in town and city centres? Q: What are the data protection rules that apply when rolling out cashless payment, virtual permits and other digital parking services? Q: Ho

The International Parking Community (IPC) has formalised its partnership with the People’s Parking accreditation scheme for car parks. The accreditation scheme is now being adopted as an IPC standard, and the scheme’s founder, Helen Dolphin will be representing the evolving interests of consumers for the IPC’s steering committee. The scheme highlights car parks that provide spaces for visitors with a disability and parents with children. It also promotes charging points for e

Parking Review magazine has launched the 2018 edition of the British Parking Awards. Now in their 17th year, the competition encourages both public and private sector organisations to nominate people and projects that represent the best in parking management, design and innovation. The awards encompass both the on-street and off-street sides of the parking sector. The diverse nature of the parking sector means that the competition has categories that cover buildings, technology and people. Bri

Network Rail has sold the Quadrant:MK multi-storey to parking operator Indigo. The car park is located close to the Milton Keynes Central railway station and one of the main lines from London to Manchester. The six-floor car park, which has 294 spaces, is open around the clock seven days a week. The car park’s security measures include a CCTV monitored entrance that requires an entry code. The car park is monitored remotely, with customers able to contact Indigo’s customer support

Up to 130 sets of car keys and a number of vehicles have been stolen from a site used by a meet & greet company offering long-stay parking near Manchester Airport. The company, Car Park Manchester, is not affiliated with the airport. In total four cars have been taken from the Car Park Manchester site in Hale, Trafford.

The average British motorist wastes £968 and spends nearly five days stuck in traffic each year because of congestion, analysis by the Local Government Association (LGA) reveals Traffic congestion has a serious impact on economic development, quality of life and public health, the Local Government Association (LGA) warns in a new report. The average British motorist wastes £968 and spends nearly five days stuck in traffic each year because of congestion, analysis by the LGA suggests

The AA is calling on English local authorities o invest parking revenues into maintaining their highways. A survey conducted by the motoring organisation found that 62% of English authorities have cut their budgets for the 2017/18 fiscal year by half-a-million pounds compared with 2016/17. The reduction is from £12.1m to £11.6m. AA president Edmund King said: "Far too often drivers are viewed by every level of government as wallets on wheels. We think it is time to redress the balan

Technological and sociological trends will transform the design and operation of parking services. The car park of the future will be a place where, besides parking, you re-charge your electric car and/or pick up online purchases. Within the next few years, car parks will become places where semi-autonomous cars drop-off their driver and passengers, park themselves and then pick them up again after their shopping trip or leisure experience. The fact that the car of the future will most probably

Leeds’ new Temple Green Park & Ride has opened in the city’s Gateway45 Enterprise Zone. The 1,000-space P&R facility is located next to the A63, just off Junction 45 of the M1 motorway.  A 15-minute bus link to the city centre runs into the city centre every 10 to 15 minutes. Journeys between Temple Green and Boar Lane in the city centre are on low-emission buses run by First West Yorkshire. The buses, which are equipped with free Wi-Fi, run between 6am and 9pm weekdays

The orthodoxy of Post-War planning was that for towns and cities to thrive they needed to be accessible by car. This led to an urban scene dominated by flyovers, ring roads, car parks and kerbsides lined with parked vehicles. However, in the early 1970s the historic city of Oxford was among the first British cities to put the brakes on the car. Over the past 45 years Oxfordshire County Council and Oxford City Council have implemented a series of transport policies that seek to manage traffic an

A pick-up and drop-off facility opened at Glasgow Airport at the end of April. The purpose-built covered area is the final stage of a wider scheme of works A pick-up and drop-off facility opened at Glasgow Airport at the end of April. The purpose-built covered area is the final stage of a wider scheme of works designed to reduce congestion and improve the flow of traffic on the airport’s road network. Amanda McMillan, managing director at Glasgow Airport, said: “In addition to addre

Parking and property professionals have long lived by the mantra ‘location, location, location’. But while location remains important, the era of data analytics and connected cars means information and communication will soon be the most important factors for developers, retailers and parking operators. Parking and places in the era of connected cars will be central themes at Parking & Property 2017. The line-up of speakers includes experts in retail trends, property development

The travails of President Trump, the nuclear ambitions of North Korea, carnage in Syria and the politics of Brexit have all been dominating the headlines for months, so it was a surprise to see one of the world’s most influential business publications, The Economist, devoted a leader article (‘Aparkalypse now’) and a feature piece (‘Sacred spaces’) to parking’s impact on the health and vitality of cities. “Parking can seem like the most humdrum concern

Creating a car park in a factory and assembling it on site is a process that has been around for many years, but projects led by HUBER offer proof that prefabrication does not mean creating identikit buildings. HUBER is a German construction company specialising in car park design and build based on the use of a steel-frame building system. The company believes key benefits of using steel frames is that they shorten delivery times and ensure consistent quality. Prefabrication ensures better qua

There is a common perception that all a town or city centre needs to do to thrive is to provide ample, free parking. But encouraging people to visit a particular high street or shopping centre is a more complex equation. I recently held a business focus group and workshop to try and identify some of the major challenges facing the town centre. I’m sure many places would be able to identify with the issues that came up. Firstly, I asked: “What is the biggest challenge facing the town

Parking & Property 2017 8 June: 15 Hatfields, London Parking & Property is the only annual event dedicated to off-street parking. Over the past 7 years the conference has provided a forum for debate and sharing best practice among public and private sector car park owners and operators, developers, planners and companies supplying design and equipment services. The conference content is developed by Nigel Williams, managing director of Parking Matters, and Mark Moran, editor of

Parking projects that seek to make the lives of children safer and easier where among the winners at the British Parking Awards 2017, which took place on Friday 10 March. Kent County Council won the Front Line Award for its Responsible Parking Squad initiative. The council has devised a toolkit of materials and techniques that can be used by pupils at secondary schools to tackle the problem of dangerous parking and driving, especially during the school run. The London Borough of Wandsworth rec

The winners of the British Parking Awards 2017 will be revealed at an awards ceremony in London on 10 March. The British Parking Awards were launched by Parking Review magazine in 2002 to recognise achievement and best practice in the design and management of parking. With winners selected by a jury of their peers, the British Parking Parking Awards logo and trophy have become a respected and coveted mark of excellence among parking professionals. Below we provide a guide to the finalists. Par

A growing population and increasing number of cars on the Isle of Wight will need to be tackled with more consistent parking enforcement and pricing measures, new payment systems and measures to better balance the supply and demand of spaces. Isle of Wight Council’s executive has agreed a parking strategy developed by consultant White Young Green, whose recommendations are based on public consultation, spoke to town and parish councils, business associations and transport operators. The c

The London Borough of Redbridge has been through a period of self-scrutiny, renewal and reinvention over the past 12 months. Since the arrival of new chief executive Andy Donald a year ago there have been big changes, with a new structure comprising four directorates: People, Place, Resources and Strategy. Parking, traffic management and transport now sit in Place, which is made up of three sections – Regeneration & Property, Housing and Civic Pride.  Civic Pride also covers high

The long list of entries to the British Parking Awards 2017 has been unveiled. This year the competition has attracted over 90 submissions that are now being assessed by the jury.The British Parking Awards encompass the worlds of traffic management, architecture, enforcement, technology and property.This year there are entries from local authorities, commercial operators, rail companies, universities, retailers, consruction companies, equipment suppliers and many others. To see the 2017 entry li

The surplus produced from council parking operations in England has reached a record high of just over three-quarters of a billion pounds, analysis by the RAC Foundation has revealed. In the 2015-16 financial year, the 353 local authorities in England generated a combined surplus of £756m from their on-street and off-street parking activities. This is a 9% increase on the 2014-15 figure of £693m, and 34% higher than in 2011-12. The figures are calculated

A car park created by farmers to provide spaces for rail users in Northamptonshire has received a Park Mark. Farming family Jackson & Co identified the need for parking at Long Buckby Station after noticing how many cars were parked on adjacent roads. The family obtained planning permission for a 290-space car park, helping reduce the number of vehicles parked on the approach road. The car park is operated for the family by Indigo Park Solutions. The Jackson family said: “We are rea

The efficient management of the kerbside and roadspace is essential to the health, wealth and vitality of urban centres. These were central themes of Parking World 2016, which took place in London on 24 November.  Over 250 people attended Parking World to listen to a programme featuring over 50 speakers from across UK and Europe. There were presentations by local authorities, academics, consultants, architects, technologists, campaigners and contractors. The programme was devised by Mark

The British Parking Awards 2017 are open for entries. The annual competition recognises excellence in parking policy, design and management. The awards span the on-street and off-street parking sectors, encompassing the planning, design and management of both structures and operations. There are also categories that recognise the achievements of individuals and teams working in the parking sector. The awards also categories that recognise innovative systems and business approaches. The categor

The efficient management of the kerbside and roadspace is essential to the health, wealth and vitality of urban centres. This will be a central theme of Parking World 2016, which takes place at the Kia Oval in London on 24 November.  There will be sessions on: the provision and regulation of parking in town and city centres; the workplace parking levy concept; fighting Blue Badge fraud; and the development of online parking payment and booking services. To book your place click here (Quot

A druid is taking legal action over the introduction of parking charges during the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge, claiming they “unfairly target” his religion. Parking at the neolithic monument usually costs £5, but in June English Heritage introduced a £15 fee for parking during special events. The parking charge is designed to encourage people to car share or travel by bus. King Arthur Pendragon believes the £15 fee is illegal and excludes

Scores of East Midlands Trains stations and car parks have been officially recognised for their safety and security by two national schemes. Some 58 stations on the network have been accredited under the Secure Stations Scheme, which is administered by the Department for Transport and British Transport Police. The scheme represents a national standard for passenger safety and security on Britain’s railway stations. Some 23 of the stations have been newly accredited follow

Rebuilding a rail station that sits opposite the entrance of Hatfield House, one of England’s greatest stately homes, posed both a design and a logistical challenge for Network Rail. In a move that may surprise some, it was a challenge largely solved by building a multi-storey car park. Hatfield Station is located on the East Coast mainline, 17 miles north of London Kings Cross. The station is owned by Network Rail and operated by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR). Over the past three years t

Workplace parking levies and other innovative financial mechanisms could raise millions for public transport, suggests the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT). The campaign is urging the government to consider broadening the ways in which public transport is financed in the UK, and believes it could learn from innovative schemes like Nottingham’s workplace parking levy (WPL). Research commissioned as part of Campaign for Better Transport’s new thought leadership programme, called Tr

Where parking is located and how spaces are managed will be transformed as the way in which we travel to, from and within urban centres changes. As cars and customers become more connected, the era of Intelligent Mobility will see the role and form of parking facilities evolve. Ultimately, the distinctions between on-street and off-street parking will become blurred. These are some of the predictions of Theo Thuis, chief operating officer of Q-Park, a parking management company that operates ac

Parking and property experts from across Europe will meet in London on 12 May to discuss the changing relationship between motorists, their vehicles, and how they park. The annual Parking & Property event will also explore how retailers and shopping centre owners are making parking facilities a positive part of the shopping experience by creating more attractive facilities and using parking as part of their marketing and loyalty programmes. Over the past six years Parking & Property ha

Dame Zaha Hadid, the Iranian-born British architect who has died aged 65, was best known for projects such as the Aquatic Centre for the 2012 London Olympics, the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, also in London, and MAXXI Museum in Rome. She also designed the Al-Wakrah Stadium in Dubai, which will be centrepiece of the World Cup 2022. In 2004 she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize for her work on the Guangzhou Opera House in China. But among the art galleries, sports centr

Parking and property experts from across Europe will meet in London on 12 May to discuss the changing relationship between drivers and their vehicles in the era of online commerce, connected cars and Intelligent Mobility. The annual Parking & Property event will also explore how retailers are making parking a positive part of the shopping experience. The day’s content has been developed by Nigel Williams, managing director of Parking Matters, and Mark Moran, editor of Parkin

Building on airports is a challenge, as the team that created the Park & Depart facility at Aberdeen International Airport discovered. The Scottish airport has a customer base comprising business and leisure passengers flying from its main terminal, as well as four heliports serving oil and gas platforms in the North Sea. Growing passenger numbers led the airport deciding to create a new long-term car park. The airport approached APCOA UK & Ireland, which manages its three on-site car p

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) has published a good practice guide for solar car parks. The guidance shows how car park owners can maximize the economic and environmental performance of their assets by deploying PV technologies. Jonny Williams, director of the BRE National Solar Centre Jonny Williams said: “Solar carports are an excellent way of improving the car-parking experience, whilst also generating clean electricity. With over 17,000 car parks in th

The best of British parking was celebrated today when comedian Hal Cruttenden revealed the winners of the 15th British Parking Awards at the Lancaster London Hotel. Over 500 people from across the worlds of car park design, construction, management and technology attended the event. The awards showcased excellence in the design of parking facilities, exceptional customer service and innovative thinking. This year projects that deliver real benefit to local communities made a particular impa

All cashless parking across South West Trains’ network of stations will be offered by RingGo. Since the original roll-out in 2008, the rail network has been split between RingGo and PayByPhone. In all, 117 SWT stations will now offer phone parking. RingGo was already offered at 61 station car parks while the changeover sees a further 31 car parks transfer to RingGo as well as 26 new station car parks that have not previously taken cashless payments.   James Vickers, commercial &

Former soldier Duncan Slater has joined the charity Disabled Motoring UK (DMUK) as its external affairs manager. A key part of his role is to manage DMUK’s Disabled Parking Award, an accreditation for car parks to achieve which show disabled people that they are accessible. Slater will also work with other organisations and the government to promote accessibility for disabled people. One of DMUK’s current campaigns is about improving the accessibility of independent refuelling at p

Liverpool City Region (LCR) has completed the installation of 28 of electric vehicle (EV) charge points. They constitute the first phase of Recharge, the combined authority’s scheme to encourage the public and the local authorities to simultaneously decrease their carbon footprints. Merseytravel, the executive body that provides professional, strategic and operational transport advice to the LCR is responsible for coordinating Recharge bids and projects. 

The finalists of the British Parking Awards 2016 have been revealed by Parking Review magazine, which has organised the competition since 2002.  To see the list click here The winners will be revealed by the actor and comedian Hal Cruttenden at a gala lunch to be held at the Lancaster London London on Friday 4 March. The finalists come from across the public and private parking sectors, and encompass on-street and off-street parking operations. Besides the competitive categories, there

Over 80 entries are competing in the British Parking Awards 2016, the annual competition organised by Parking Review magazine.  The entries come from across the public and private parking sectors, and encompasses on-street and off-street parking operations. The competition has categories devoted to the built environment and parking technology, but also recognises achievements by individuals and teams working in parking. Besides the competitive categories, there will be special awards suc

The British Parking Awards have established a reputation for selecting witty and engaging hosts. Next year's ceremony, which takes place in London on Friday 4 March 2016, will be compered by the comedian Hal Cruttenden. Cruttenden is a familiar face on TV, with appearances on Have I Got News for you, The Royal Variety Performance, Live at the Apollo, Would I Lie To You?, Sunday Night at the Palladium, The Great British Bake Off: Extra Slice, Mock The Week, Celebrity Squares and Pointless Celebr

Nottingham tram network’s latest park & ride sites, opened as part of NET’s recent expansion, have attained Park Mark status under the Secured Car Park scheme. The new sites at Toton Lane and Clifton South, offer over 2,300 free parking spaces between them. Located at the end of the two new tram lines, the surface sites have extensive lighting, and are covered by a high-tech CCTV system. The Park Mark awards were presented to Nottingham Trams by Nottinghamshire Police and Crime

The British Parking Awards shine a spotlight on the most imaginative, inspiring and innovative projects, people and ideas in the parking sector. The awards were launched by Parking Review magazine in 2002 with the aim of recognising the best examples of car park management, enforcement, design and teamwork. Since then they have gone on to become the most sought after accolades in the sector, with over 100 enrries being received on average every year. The deadline for entries to the 2016 awards

A mess of conflicting signs, worn-away road markings and bewildering road layouts… and that’s before you get out of the car. This is the reality of ‘taking a break’ at many motorway service areas, according to a survey carried out by the Road Safety Markings Association (RSMA), which represents 95% of the road marking sector in the UK.  The RSMA surveyed 85 pit-stops on England’s motorway network. It assessed the external layout of motorway service areas. Two

Nine Great Western Railway (GWR) station car parks run by APCOA Parking (UK) have been awarded Park Mark. Peter Broad, Park Mark assessor, and Chas Cannon, senior area manager for the British Parking Association, found the car parks had experienced either no or very low crime levels over the past 12 months. The assessments were carried out throughout June and July at Bath Spa, Stonehouse, Yatton, Western Super Mare, Keynsham, Stroud (two car parks), Swindon (three car parks), Trowbridge (two ca

NCP has been awarded a 10-year deal to manage and market parking at Grand Central, Birmingham’s new retail and transport hub, which opened in September. The car park is for shoppers and travellers using Birmingham’s Grand Central Station. NCP says the contract represents a new model for retail car parks as it has secured the site on a fixed-rate basis, with an undertaking that the focus for all parties will be on the quality of the service delivered over the profits that the car par

The relationship between the car and the city very much at the heart of this year’s Parking World event, which takes place at the KIA Oval. Over the past 11 years the annual conference and exhibition, programmed by the Parking Review team, has taken a wide-ranging and thought-provoking approach that recognises parking is variously a key transport policy and traffic management tool, a public service and a business activity. Parking World is the backbone of a major ‘Intelligent City M

Uniform licensing controls – including universal criminal record checks on drivers – must be introduced for limousines, party buses, pedicabs and rickshaws to combat safety fears, said the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents over 370 councils in England and Wales. The LGA warns that current legislation is “confusing” and “utterly outdated”.  The association wants these vehicles and their drivers to come under the same scrutiny as London

Major sporting events are a magnet for spectators, and their cars. When Portsmouth hosted the America’s Cup World Series sailing competition at the end of July it had to plan for the fact that many thousands of visitors would arrive by car. The focal points of the event on land were the ‘race village’ and a ‘fanzone’ for paying guests and VIPs who watched the races from a 1,500-seat VIP grandstand erected near the Southsea bandstand. Most people, however, headed to

Over a quarter of parking transactions at sites serving Dublin’s Luas light rail system are now made using mobile phones. Irish mobile parking operator parkbytext says its service now accounts for 27% of payments at the Luas Park + Ride car parks. Stillorgan has seen the highest take-up of phone payments, accounting for an average of 40% of all parking revenue. Overall Luas Park + Ride Red Cow is the busiest location.  Last year public transport operator Transdev awarded Nationwide

The enforcement of parking on private land, the ‘Sharing Economy’, ‘Connected Cars’ the benchmarking of accessible parking bays and Life Care Plans are just some of the many themes being discussed at Parking & Property 2015.  The annual conference is the only UK event focussed purely on the off-street parking sector. The event is programmed by Mark Moran, editor of Parking Review, and Nigel Williams, managing director of the Parking Matters consultancy. A centr

Portsmouth Park & Ride acts as a gateway to the city, and as means of reducing congestion. The 663-space surface facility opened on 5 April 2014 and operates seven days a week. The P&R has exceeded usage estimates and saw 77,000 cars park there in the first eight months. The site is situated directly off Junction 1 of the M275 to the north of the western corridor into Portsmouth, one of only three roads into the city. The P&R serves The Hard Interchange, which is the stop for Gunwha

Designs for a new railway station in Thanet with links to London’s Stratford International include a 300-space car park. Over the past two months residents and local businesses have been asked for their views on the facilities, potential impacts and benefits of the proposed parkway.  The £14m project will deliver two-platform station, with parking and an access road connecting it to the A256 and A299 at the Sevenscore roundabout. Passengers would be able to reach London Stratfo

Two projects that seek to educate parents on how to park in a considerate manner around schools were among the winners of the British Parking Awards 2015. The South East Parking Group and Kent County Council received a Special Jury Prize for its Safer Parking Project, while Cambridgeshire County Council Road Safety won the Parking in the Community Award. Both initiatives have engaged directly with school children, teachers and parents in a bid to reduce the risk posed by dangerous parking. Oth

Robert Halfon, Conservative MP for Harlow in Essex, is calling for a House of Commons investigation into the enforcement practices of NCP at Harlow Town station.  Last month Halfon called on the Leader of the House, William Hague, to work with the transport and business ministers to investigate NCP’s enforcement practices. He asked Hague: “Can you contact the transport minister and business minister and call for an urgent inquiry into this disgraceful behaviour by NCP?”

The head of the train drivers’ union has accused train operating companies (TOCs) of driving up the cost of parking for passengers.  Mick Whelan, general secretary of ASLEF said: “Every year the TOCs put up the price of parking, way ahead of inflation. It’s almost as if they want to drive people off the railways and onto the roads. The truth, of course, is that they are not in the business of running a public service, but of making as much profit as possible.” He s

Proposals to introduce parking charges at two guided busway sites in Cambridgeshire have been condemned by bus users. Concerned passengers expressed dismay about the plans to introduce parking charges at sites in Meadow Lane, St Ives and Station Road in Longstanton following a month-long council consultation. The £1 parking charge could generate annual revenues in excess of £120,000, with Cambridgeshire stating that such a move was “necessary”, with revenue ultimately be

A new parking deck at the Four Oaks railway station will be built for West Midlands integrated transport authority Centro by design & build contractor Bourne Parking. The Four Oaks south car park currently has 175 spaces.  The new single-storey deck will be built on part of the surface site, increasing its capacity by 50 parking spaces. Bourne Parking will erect the deck, a Cycle Hub shelter and vehicular access gate. The car park features lighting, CCTV and emergency help-points. Con

The short list for the British Parking Awards 2015 has been published. The winners of the annual competition will be revealed by Ade Adepitan, the Paralympic wheelchair basketball player and TV presenter, at the Lancaster Hotel in London on Friday 6 March. The awards, which have been organised by Parking Review since 2002, recognise excellence and achievement in the parking sector. To see the short list click here The competition encompasses many aspects of the parking sector, with categ

Park & ride in the West Midlands are being expanded as part of the Access to Growth programme, funded by the passenger transport executive Centro and the Department for Transport (DfT). The works comprise extensions to car parks at Acocks Green, Rowley Regis, Kings Norton and Stourbridge Junction, as well as a new parking deck at Four Oaks. The project includes the expansion of CCTV and security systems as well as the introduction of energy efficient lighting. At Rowley Regis on the Birmi

APCOA Parking (UK) has appointed Bradley Holcombe to the position of area operations manager for its contract with Network Rail. Holcombe joins APCOA’s Commercial Parking Services’ team from NCP, where he was responsible for a portfolio of five multi-storey car parks and one open surface facility in Birmingham city centre. Prior to that, Holcombe worked was a retail store manager for Maplin Electronics. As part of his new role, Holcombe will be responsible for seven parking locatio

Transport for London (TfL) has retained NCP to manage its 61 London Underground station car parks. The contract includes car park development, technology, operational management, facilities management and maintenance. NCP has managed London Underground’s car parks since 2002. The company says that occupancy has grown by 18% over the last five years and two new car parks have been added to the portfolio, at Morden and Chesham. Derek Hulyer, NCP’s head of rail said: “Since the

Stratford International Station’s multi-storey car park has received the Disabled Parking Award (DPA) following an assessment by the charity Disabled Motoring UK. Stratford International is owned by HS1, which has the 30-year concession to own and operate High Speed 1, the first section of the UK’s high-speed rail network. The car park is managed by CP Plus, which also manages car parks on behalf of HS1 at Ebbsfleet International, Ashford International and St Pancras International.

A 440-space multi-storey car park forms part of a £150m scheme plan to regenerate Guildford’s railway station. The plans have been submitted to the borough by Solum Regeneration. This is the seventh project to be promoted by Solum Regeneration, a £500m joint venture established in 2008 between Network Rail and Kier Property to bring private investment into the rail network.  Solum generates funds from the development of under-used railway land and has completed projects a

The City of York is encouraging motorists using its park & ride sites to complete their journeys into the city centre by bike rather than bus. The Park & Pedal initiative is run by the council’s iTravel York with aim of providing a way to quickly and easily commute or shop whilst at the same time to encouraging physical activity.  Commuters can utilise the scheme in various ways: they can drive to a P&R site, park for free and complete the rest of the journey in to the ce

City of York Council has invested in park & ride as a means of reducing traffic congestion and pollution in its historic city centre over the past decade. More than four million trips were made on park & ride services in 2013. The city is now served by six P&R sites, with two new locations opening in June 2014. These provide a total of 4,770 parking spaces.  iTravel Park & ride is a key element of the city council’s iTravel initiative, which encourages people to mode

When it appeared 25 years ago, the first edition of Parking Review stated the new title would be a quarterly, but I must admit that back in late 1989 it was not certain that the theme of parking cars would sustain a regular publication. But the reaction to issue 1 was so positive that issue 2 appeared in January 1990 and the magazine was soon established as a bi-monthly, then ten times year, and, before long it was a monthly. Things did not stop there. As early as 1990 we produced a supplement

Parking World 2014 covered a great deal of territory. The tenth Parking Review autumn conference presented delegates with a programme that encompassed themes affecting both on-street and off-street operations and the private and public sectors, including sessions on customer service, the economics of parking and rethinking parking as urban space.  The day commenced with an impassioned talk on the importance of putting people at the heart of parking operations by Jill Fraser, chief executiv

Commuters who park inconsiderately at Midland Metro park & ride sites are now being issued with £100 parking charge notices. Warning signs have been put up and more than 20,000 leaflets distributed to users at all 59 free-to-use car parks at 38 railway and Midland Metro stops by Centro, the West Midland's public transport co-ordinator.  Centro’s private parking management team, Sheffield-based Vehicle Control Services, is patrolling park & ride sites and issuing fines t

Parking engineers from the UK have developed an integrated payment system that enables public transport users in Perth, Australia to pay for car parking using their SmartRider smartcards. The new system was developed by a team at Parkeon working in partnership with the Public Transport Authority of Western Australia. It is now in operation at Transperth train stations, with 128 SmartParker meters having been installed. Parkeon said the machines are processing more than 15,000 transactions per d

A new car park forms part of proposals for the biggest transformation of Cardiff rail station since it was built in the middle of the 19th century.  The plans unveiled by Network Rail include an extended glass-fronted station concourse, which will feature new retail space and a mezzanine floor topped by a wave effect roof. A new multi-storey car park and office space will be built at the rear of the station. The new look station forms part of wider plans to revamp the city centre. The tra

A new multi-storey car park at Bristol Parkway was opened by transport minister Baroness Kramer last month. The £13m structure has added 710 new spaces to the First Great Western operated station. The station’s parking capacity is now around 1,800 spaces. Before the work, the site was regularly full and First Great Western expects Bristol Parkway to become much busier once the Great Western mainline is electrified. Baroness Kramer said: “The work at Bristol Parkway is a grea

Inspirational and inventive people working in parking will be recognised in the British Parking Awards 2015, which are launched this month. The annual competition, which has been run by Parking Review magazine since 2002, sees a set of new categories covering parking in the community and sustainability added to classic ones for car park structures, teams and customer service. To enter the British Parking Awards click here The awards recognise excellence in the design, management and deliv

APCOA Parking (UK) has appointed Paul Fawcett as area manager (north) for its management services’ contract with Network Rail. Fawcett joins APCOA’s Commercial Parking Services’ team from Q-Park, where he worked in a similar area managerial role. Prior to that, he worked for 12 years in the retail industry, working his way up to the position of general manager. Fawcett will be responsible for 12 sites across the north of England as well as two southern sites: Letchworth and W

London Underground passengers are now able to pick up items ordered on Amazon at lockers located at two Tube station car parks. The lockers are the latest ‘click & collect’ partnership between Transport for London (TfL) and retailers, following deals set up with supermarkets. The first two stations offering Amazon lockers are Finchley Central on the Northern line and Newbury Park on the Central Line. A TfL spokesman said: “The lockers are an ideal way for commuters who wa

Providing more secure bays for motorcycles at rail stations should be seen as a vital part of managing parking demand, according to the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). In a new report on motorcycle parking, the association says that motorbikes are increasingly seen as a cheaper alternative to car use over distances considered too great to cycle.  “In many instances motorcycles bring financial benefits for the user, as often they are not charged for parking,” sa

Nominations can now be submitted for the 2014 National Cycle Rail Awards. The event, run by the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), recognises schemes, projects, cycling groups and individuals that have improved or encouraged greater use of combined cycle and rail travel. Celebrating its tenth birthday this year, the awards have played a key role in increasing cycle access to the railways by spreading best practice and improving communication across the sector, says Conrad Haigh, A

APCOA Parking (UK) has appointed Jonathan Harris as business manager for its new management services’ contract with Network Rail. Harris joined APCOA from the Co-operative Group’s retail division, where he had operational responsibility for 15 food outlets in the West Midlands.    At the Co-op Harris helped introduce new management systems and cost-improvement programmes. Prior to the Co-op Harris held senior management positions within the Spirit Group, comprising: Scot

While Durham's park & ride service is no doubt “popular and well liked” (PR April), it skims over the major disbenefits of P&R – the hidden cost to the taxpayer for very little gain, if any. I don't know the cost of ordinary buses in Durham but I suspect that an all-day ticket over a similar distance will be far more than the £2 charged by Durham County Council, which not only has to pay for a high-frequency bus service but also the capital and other revenue cost

A new park & ride service serving Portsmouth started operating last month. The £38m facility, which provides 650 parking spaces, is located at Tipner off the M275. A new motorway junction and bus priority lanes were created to accommodate the P&R service. First Bus will be operating services between Tipner and Portsmouth city centre via the Historic Dockyard and Gunwharf Quay at 12-minute intervals. Tickets have been initially set at £2 per car a day. This is cheaper than u

Smart vehicles that assist drivers and driverless robot vehicles were among the innovations being demonstrated at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One concept on display was the Navia, a robot shuttle bus developed by French company Induct, which is a standing room only, and the company says it is the first commercially available vehicle of its type in the US.  The $250,000 (£151,000) 10-person shuttle is not currently licensed for road use, but it is limited to &ldq

Parking & Property 2014 takes place in 15 May The fourth annual Parking & Property conference and exhibition takes place in London on 15 May. The event is the only forum devoted to the design, construction, maintenance and upkeep of off-street parking. The conference is organised by Parking Review magazine in partnership with consultancy Parking Matters. "Car parks are an essential but often overlooked form of building," says Mark Moran, editor of Parking Review. "They are key element

Over 80 entrants are competing to make the finals of the British Parking Awards 2014. The annual competition, organised by Parking Review magazine, recognises best practice and innovation across the on-street and off-street parking sector. The full list of nominees can seen by clicking here The entries are now being assessed by an expert panel of a dozen people drawn from the worlds of parking and transport consultancy, which supports the competition. The short list of finalists is set to be

The British Parking Awards 2014 will be hosted by Shappi Khorsandi, the Iranian comedian and author whose television appearances include Mock The Week and Live at the Apollo.  The awards ceremony takes place at the Lancaster London on Friday 7 March. The deadline for entries is Wednesday 15 January. Details of the categorioes and criteria can be found at: www.britishparkingawards.co.uk Besides her TV work, Shappi Khorsandi is a regular on Radio

A 320-space underground car park will feature in the £200m Haymarket development in Edinburgh that will replace an NCP multi-storey on the site.  Developer Interserve and Tiger Developments entered into a joint venture agreement in April 2013 to develop the four-acre site next to Haymarket rail station. The scheme has full planning consent for 404,000 sq ft of offices and 60,000 sq ft of commercial and leisure space, as well as a 165-room hotel. Network Rail is allowing preparatory

Work has begun on a new £3.5m transport interchange at Galashiels serving the Borders to Edinburgh railway. The first phase of work will see the re-alignment of Stirling Street to create an area for the new building adjacent to Ladhope Vale. This work will also include the creation of a new civic space on the former bus station and surface parking for 100 vehicles. The new car park will be created on the remainder of the former bus station to replace spaces. Work on the new Transport In

Stonehenge was built between 3,000 BC and 1,600 BC and is thought to have been used for a variety of religious ceremonies. More recently the World Heritage site has become a popular tourist attraction. Now, after years of discussion and false starts, it seems that the site will finally get a car park and visitor centre that is fit for purpose. The first phase of the long-delayed Stonehenge Visitor Centre will open to the public on 18 December, in time for the Winter Solstice on 21 December. The

Bus operator Stagecoach has called Cambridge County Council’s plan to introduce a £1 daily charge for its park & ride sites “extremely short-sighted”. It has offered to run the five park & ride sites at “no cost to the council”. Stagecoach, the county’s main bus operator notes the council’s admission that the plan is likely to lead to a 5% drop in use of the park & sites. This would amount to an annual loss of more than 180,000 trips

The British Parking Awards 2014 are now live. Entries are being accepted for the annual competition, which has been organised by Parking Review magazine since 2002. The competition includes new categories that recognise the achievements of the British parking sector on the international stage and also the world of cycling. The deadine for entries is 18 December. “The awards recognise and celebrate both innovation and best practice across the on-street and off-street parking worlds,&rdquo

The increasing levels of connectivity between the car and urban parking spaces will be a key theme of the Parking World 2013 conference, which takes place in London on Wednesday 13 November. The annual Parking Review event, which is sponsored by Zenco Systems, will also explore issues such as how local authorities are balancing the public service and commercial aspects of running a parking operation. The event will be supported by a major exhibition and is co-located with two seminars – C

Parking charges could be introduced at Cambridge’s park & ride sites to combat abuse of the sites after the county council’s cabinet approved the proposal.  Cambridgeshire County Council is seeking to bring in a £1 per vehicle per day charge at its five edge of city sites in addition to the bus ticket price to cover the annual £1m plus running costs of the park & ride operations. The council’s deputy leader Mac McGuire said that the charges would hel

VivoPark, Metric Group’s new automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) solution for parking management has been installed at a major London rail station. The system is up and running successfully at the 700-space multi-storey car park serving Stratford International Station. The company will also be undertaking two further VivoPark installations in Shropshire. “The payment terminal is only part of the solution,” says Richard Boultbee, Metric Parking UK’s sales and market

Cambridgeshire County Council has submitted a planning application for a new railway station at Cambridge Science Park interchange. The new station is designed to form a transport hub serving Cambridge’s main business areas, including the Science Park, St John’s Innovation Centre and the Cambridge Business Park. The scheme, designed by engineering consultant Atkins, will create a transport hub joining up rail, bus services, pedestrian and cycling facilities at the Science Park. The

A new cycling hub at Brighton railway station has been approved by Brighton &  Hove City Council. The three-storey building will provide shower and changing facilities, toilets, a repair outlet and bike hire. There will also be a bike shop and café. The hub is due to open by Spring 2014. The hub, which will be free will provide storage for 500 bikes adding to the current 170 parking spaces around the station. This represents an increase of 420 cycle parking spaces at the stati

A cycle hub with space for 1,000 bikes has opened at Chelmsford rail station, marking a 40% rise in cycle parking capacity. The facility was unveiled last month by Dutch train operator Abellio, which runs the Greater Anglia franchise. Based on the Cyclepoint concept developed in The Netherlands, the new hub offers secure parking as well as cycle hire, retail and maintenance. A range of modular shelters and cycle parking products has been provided by Falco, Greater Anglia’s commercial part

Work has begun on a £13m multi-storey car park at Bristol Parkway train station. The project will add 710 extra spaces to the station’s existing 1,100-space, single-storey parking deck. Network Rail is carrying out the work with train operator First Great Western. The car park is scheduled for completion by March 2014. The three-storey car park designed by architects Building Design Partnership (BDP), will be constructed in the area north of the station building. The works will see

The third Parking & Property conference will take place in London on 23 May. The event, organised by Landor LINKS, provides a forum for the owners and operators of car parks to discuss issues such as car park design, refurbishment, funding, customer service and new technology. The programme has been developed by Parking Review in partnership with consultancy Parking Matters, whose principal Nigel Williams will deliver a keynote speech. It is a forum for public and private sector car park

Plans for a new multi-storey at Banbury Railway Station have been approved by Cherwell District Council. The scheme will see a four-storey car park providing 707 spaces, associated drop-off circulation space and a pedestrian bridge linking the car park to the eastern-end of the station building. The MSCP’s lead designer for the project is McNaughton, and a contractor for the build is due to be appointed imminently. The MSCP would be a split-level design allowing more efficient vehicle cir

The Olympic Games and a match-day car park used by fans of both Liverpool and Everton were among the winners at the British Parking Awards, which were announced in London on Friday 8 March. The competition, which is now in its 12th year, is organised by Parking Review and Landor LINKS to recognise and celebrate the best in parking management, design and innovation. The Olympic legacy was in evidence during the ceremony, as LOCOG Transport won the Partnership Award for its work to ensure that p

Parking for more than 1,000 vehicles features in plans for Haywards Heath railway station, in West Sussex. Mid Sussex District Council’s planning committee gave planning permission on 10 January. Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, also approved the scheme, deciding that in the plans did not require further scrutiny. The station will feature a new forecourt with a restaurant, shops and a new car park for 820 vehicles, with an additional 208 parking

A Czech bicycle importer has installed an automated cycle parking tower at a railway station in the city of Hradec Kralove. Velo, which imports cycles from Wheeler bicycles of Taiwan, has co-funded the building of a glass walled automated cycle parking tower. The tower can hold up to 117 bicycles on seven tiers. Users pay for their parking via a ticket machine, which enables access and retrieval of the bicycle. The mechanical aspect of the system consists of a central unit with cushioned alum

Work has started on a new park & ride and motorway junction at Tipner in Portsmouth. The new junction will provide access to the 663 space park & ride on the east of the M275, providing sustainable transport to cater for increasing numbers of visitors generated by a redeveloped city centre and seafront, as well as for commuters and major events in the city. The Department for Transport (DfT) awarded funding of £19.5m, with a further £8.5m of council funding towards the junc

A 222-space multi-storey has opened at Warwick Parkway station bringing the total capacity to nearly 1,000. This is the second multi-storey built for Chiltern Railways by Bourne Parking following the new car park at Solihull station last year. The launch of the Chiltern Mainline service in September 2011, with journey times falling to 72 minutes between Warwick Parkway and London Marylebone, has seen a sharp rise in passenger journeys from the station. As a result, more parking was needed. The

The provision of safe and secure cycle parking was a common factor running through the annual National Cycle-Rail Awards, presented by the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) last month. The ATOC National Cycle Rail Awards, which have been run for eight years, recognise schemes, projects and individuals that improve or encourage greater use of combined cycle and rail travel. The association says that as the number of people switching to ‘cycle-rail’ increases, many trai

All over the world cities are trying to fight traffic congestion and pollution by implementing ideas such as park & ride. WPS systems are used to manage use of park & ride sites serving Leicester, which ease traffic congestion and to cut pollution. Located just off the M1 motorway, the Enderby Park & Ride interchange provides 1,000 parking spaces. The Birstall Park & Ride, located off the A46, offers another 1,000 spaces. Both are served by a cost-effective, low-emission Quicksilver bus service

Passengers using the UK’s rail network face inconsistent treatment when travelling without a ‘valid’ ticket, according to rail consumer watchdog Passenger Focus. In its report Ticket to Ride passengers can unwittingly find themselves facing a hefty bill or even a criminal prosecution. This could be the result of an inconsistent application of complex rules, says the report. Complaints against train operators by rail users accused of travelling without a valid ticket are on the

Airports the lead the way when it comes to innovation in parking. Here are some striking innovations: Automated credit card payments. The use of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) to give pre-booked drivers ticketless entry to car parks was pioneered at airports. The online booking of parking spaces. ‘Find my car’ technologies. The British Parking Award-winning Ultra Global PRT driverless pods serving Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. Airport operators do not just invest in the

Network Rail is increasing parking provision at Manchester Piccadilly railway station. An extension to the existing multi-storey car park will see an extra 263 spaces contributing to the existing 592 spaces. Demand for rail travel from the station has increased to such a point that drivers are increasingly being turned away because the car park is full. This trend has been exacerbated by the increase in trains per hour to and from London to three per hour since the end of 2008. The £4.2m extens

Car parks can be good for the environment. This is not a joke. This issue showcases some of the latest green thinking being applied to the planning, building and operation of car parking facilities. The car is a major source of pollution, but it is possible to mitigate their impact on urban areas through the creation of park & rides, the provision of cycle stands and, increasingly, re-charging points for the new generation of electric vehicles. We are already seeing ideas such as ‘low-emis

Leading figures from the worlds of property development and management will address the latest trends and challenges relating to the management of car parks at a Parking Review conference on 22 May. Parking & Property 2012 will discuss issues such as the design and maintenance of parking for retail destinations, the role of car clubs and the enforcement of parking on private land. To book a place visit: www.TransportXtra.com/shop/events Or call: 0845 270 7965 The event has been progra

Plans for two park & ride schemes in Cornwall have been approved by the county council. Its strategic planning committee voted in favour of a new 1,350-space Eastern park & ride scheme serving Truro and a 700-space park & ride serving St Erth, near Penzance. Committee members voted by 11 to eight to approve the application for the £40m Truro scheme, which will include a Cornish food centre, energy centre and 97 homes as part of the scheme. The £10m St Erth park & r

Business travellers using one of Heathrow Airport’s key business car parks find that they make the final leg of their journey to the terminal not by shuttle bus but in white, driverless capsules which glide above the road network on dedicated tracks. These capsules, or pods, are part of a passenger rapid transport (PRT) system that the airport’s operator, BAA, believes will become increasingly common in the future. The pods are the result of over £30m worth of investment and i

Warwickshire County Council has appointed consultant Mott MacDonald to produce the outline designs for the new Stratford Parkway Station scheme. The consultant has previously designed the Warwick and Coleville Parkway stations in the county. Outline design work on the £8.8m project is due to be completed by early summer 2012, with the new station scheduled to open by December 2013. The council has also appointed consultant SLC Rail to oversee the rail elements of the project including des

Last time, if you recall, I wrote about parking in the context of the Portas Review of the Future of our High Streets. Specifically, I examined the adherence of so many, including her Queen-of-Shopsness, to the belief that more and cheaper parking is needed for high streets to thrive. This despite there being precious little evidence, if any, that justifies such a belief. But then, who cares about evidence when our instincts tell us it must be true? The more I have read, heard and pondered on t

Derby County FC Pride Park football  will be remodelled to create a new multi-sports arena. The project will involve replacing the existing surface car park, which is used as a park & ride facility on non-match days, with a new facility. Project manager on the scheme, MACE, submitted an application for a 14,500 square metre arena, with a 250-metre indoor cycle track and 1.5km exterior closed cycle circuit, with fitness and wellbeing facilities, catering and hospitality facilities. As

A 950-space multi-storey car park is due to open at Nottingham rail station as part of the £67m redevelopment of the station to be known as The Hub. The cube-like car park is a collaboration between Network Rail, East Midlands Trains and Nottingham City Council. It is being built on the western end of the existing surface station car parking area on Queen’s Road and is due to open in Spring 2012. The main contractor is VINCI Construction UK. The multi-storey has office accommodat

Final approval for the £570m extension to Nottingham’s tram network has been confirmed by the city council. It announced that the contract to provide two new lines for the Nottingham Express Transit (NET) network and the expanding the existing network by 10.8 miles has been awarded to the Tramlink Nottingham Consortium. The scheme will be partly funded by revenue from the city’s workplace parking levy (WPL), which comes into force in April. Firms with more than 10 parking spac

Proposals for a £7.5m makeover of Port Talbot Parkway railway station are to go before the Welsh government. Neath Port Talbot Borough Council, Arriva Trains Wales and Network Rail will submit a joint bid for European funding by December via the government's station improvement programme. The re-development includes a 200-space park & ride for commuters, as well as improved facilities for cyclists, bus passengers and taxis. If approved the scheme would take 18 months. Work could start

A multi-storey car park has been built by main contractor VolkerFitzpatrick for distribution park developer ProLogis as part of the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) rail port facility in Northamptonshire. DIRFT II is the second phase of the logistics centre  which provides rail connections to the Continent via the Channel Tunnel. DIRFT II creates an additional 180,000m² of warehouse and distribution facilities for Tesco. Having built the two-deck car park, VolkerF

City Parking (Glasgow) LLP runs both on and off-street parking for Glasgow City Council. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the city council, it became an arm’s length operation in 2007. City Parking (Glasgow)’s status as a limited liability partnership (LLP) allows it to operate commercially, make its own borrowing arrangements and compete for contracts from other clients. The first Glasgow City Council department to be given the opportunity to operate as an arms-length company businesses

Glasgow Queen Street rail station is to undergo a multi-million pound redevelopment which will feature a new multi-storey car park. Network Rail has selected the Buchanan Partnership  – a joint venture between Land Securities and Henderson Global Investors – as its development partner. The station will get a new glass frontage at the George Square entrance. Inside, the concourse will be extended, with a new mezzanine level food court installed, along with an atrium link to the B

Gallan Parking is a recent entrant to the town and city centre parking sector, specialising in turning underused derelict or vacant land into car parks. Launched in 2009 by Birmingham property specialist Gallan Group, the company now operates more than 3,000 spaces in an area from Sheffield to Worthing and Stafford to Norwich. “We ideally buy sites but occasionally we'll lease them or even just manage them and take a share of the profits,” says managing director Phillip Grant. &l

The British Parking Awards 2012 are now open to entries. The annual competition is organised by Parking Review. Sponsored by debt recovery specialist Equita, this is the eleventh year that the awards have taken place. They are once again supported by the British Parking Association (BPA). This year’s categories seek to recognise the best in parking management, design and enforcement, spanning both the public and private sectors. Alongside the regular categories for new and refurbished c

There are about 150,000 rail parking spaces across Britain. These generate annual revenues of about £130m. A significant sum, but small within the context of total rail “farebox” revenue of around £7bn.  It is worth noting that about 50% of rail parking spaces are currently free. Most UK rail stations do not depend on parking. In fact, only 2% have more than 500 spaces. As might be expected, most people walk to the station (41%). Only 12% of rail users park at stati

The UK parking management sector is quite a diverse one, with a group of major international players at its heart but also a wide range of medium-sized operators and smaller, often specialist companies. There are two distinct areas of parking management operation - the management of off-street car parks and the enforcement of on-street parking. But it is worth noting that as pay & display controls require enforcement, many local authorities include off-street car parks with pay & displ

The UK’s largest ever park & ride scheme will be in operation during the 2012 Olympic Games, providing more than 30,000 parking spaces. The sites are mainly intended for spectators who may find it difficult to make their entire journey to and from the Games by public transport, particularly outside of London, said the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA). During the 16 days of the Games some 30,000 spaces will be available each day across 18 car parks split into five zones serving London

On 3 October three of Oxford’s popular park & ride facilities reintroduced charges for parking. The move comes as the park & ride service returns to the management of Oxford City Council, after a three-year period operating under Oxford County Council. Budgetary pressures mean the subsidy for operating the service, which amounts to about £1m, has been removed. The city council says it is reintroducing charges to address the deficit and ensure equity of payment by all users. S

Parking Review’s annual parking management conference and exhibition will take place at Chelsea FC on Tuesday 29 November under the banner Parking World 2011. Parking World 2011 will again provide a forum for public and private sector parking specialists working in both the on-street and off-street arenas. The event comprises a conference, parallel seminar streams, exhibition and a networking reception. The launch of Parking World marks the next step in the convention’s aim to br

Flytipping is costing Network Rail nearly £2.5m each year. In 2010 around £1m was spent clearing flytipping and litter on the London North Western route, the line which covers London Euston to the West Midlands and the North of England. The company has responded to more than 5,000 reports of flytipping across the country, while more than 4,000 tonnes of illegally dumped rubbish on railway land was removed. Rubbish removed included asbestos, sofas, mattresses, broken refrigerators, s

South West Trains (SWT) has launched a self-service ‘bike dock’ at Guildford train station. The bike dock is the latest stage of a partnership between the rail company and folding cycle manufacturer Brompton Bicycle. The Brompton Dock is a block of lockers which can store up to 80 folding bikes in the station car park. Manufactured in the UK and made from 95% recycled material, the solar-panel powered dock uses smart card operated locks. SWT offers Brompton bikes for hire to seaso

South West Trains has opened a five-storey car park adjacent to Southampton Airport (Parkway) and the airport terminal check-in area. The facility can hold 575 cars and marks the final phase of South West Trains’ car park investment programme, which has seen the addition of 2,000 parking spaces across the train company’s network since the beginning of its franchise. Network Rail delivered the project on behalf of South West Trains through principal contractor Sir Robert McAlpine. Th

A 729-space multi-storey car park has been opened at Luton station on the Thameslink route, which connects Bedford and Brighton. The £19m needed to create the car park was provided with funding secured by Luton Borough Council from Network Rail. The station and car park are operated by First Capital Connect (FCC), the train operating company that runs Thameslink. The car park was built by contractor Volker Fitzpatrick. FCC hopes the extra parking spaces will accommodate an expected rise i

There are about 150,000 rail parking spaces across Britain. These generate annual revenues of about £130m. A significant sum, but small within the context of total rail “farebox” revenue of around £7bn. It is also worth noting that about 50% of rail parking spaces are currently free. Most UK rail stations do not depend on parking. In fact, only 2% have more than 500 spaces (see pie chart below). As might be expected, most people walk to the station (41%). Only 12% of rai

Working in an energy efficient manner is now a common element of the business plans for many public and private sector organisations. It also appears that a growing number organisations, often generating tens of thousands of trips per day, are also treating the consumption of travel resources with the same diligence now commonplace for managing energy and related resource consumption. A decade or so ago I produced a paper for Sustrans called Access to Public Transport and gave presentations hi

Passengers at Heathrow will benefit from a £500,000 investment to modernise and improve the bus service between all of the London airport’s five terminals and its long-stay and business car parks. Heathrow has a total of 24,000 parking spaces, which have been managed for airport owner BAA by APCOA Parking (UK) since 2009. The parking spaces are broken down into various types. Short-stay bays are provided in multi-storeys adjacent to terminals while longer stay parking for business

Edinburgh Airport is upgrading and integrating its parking management systems as part of a long-term project to cement its position as Scotland’s busiest terminal. The airport is the former Turnhouse Aerodrome, an RAF Spitfire base during World War 2 and jet fighter base in the 1950s. Turnhouse became a civil airport in the 1960s and has been run by BAA since 1971. Edinburgh is now a busy European hub, handling 9 million passengers travelling on airlines such as British Airways, Aer Lingus

A growing number of people are cycling to and from work, as well as using cycles instead of cars and public transport as a way of attending meetings and appointments during their working day. The emergence of a variety of cycle hire schemes means it is not always necessary to own the bike that you ride to and from work, or use during the day. Transport for London’s Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme (aka Boris Bikes) has encouraged thousands of Londoners to use cycles for short hops across the cap

Rail station parking is an important revenue stream, and the addition of 10,000 more spaces to the UK rail network could generate another £38m over the next five years, recommends a major report on the future of the UK’s rail system led by Sir Roy McNulty. The report, Realising the Potential of GB Rail, has been produced by the Rail Value for Money Study, was commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT) and Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR). Its 350 pages cover all aspects of

The UK is experiencing a massive rise in metal and scrap metal related theft, which is costing the economy over £700m a year. The demand for metals of all types from emerging economies in south Asia is fuelling this increase in metal prices worldwide. The metals most commonly stolen are copper, lead, aluminium, brass and bronze. China and India require vast amounts of metal imports to power the surge as they rapidly move from an agrarian to an industrialised economy. Such developments hav

Work has started on a new park & ride at Birstall, Leicestershire. The £2.8m scheme is being managed by Tarmac National Contracting. The park & ride is being created by the Midlands Highway Alliance’s (MHA) via a new procurement framework, the Medium Schemes Framework (MSF) 1. A group of 13 local authorities across the wider Midlands area, and the Highways Agency, have signed up to the MSF1 contract, which commenced in May 2010. In all, three major transport schemes in Staf

Parking Review has teamed up with leading legal firm Bircham Dyson Bell to create a seminar focussed on the planning, development, management and enforcement of off-street parking. Parking & Property 2011 will take place on Tuesday 7 June at 50 Broadway, London SW1. It will cover public and private sector parking in town centres, at retail destinations and transport hubs. There will be  presentations by Nigel Williams (Parking Matters), John Pearson (Q-Park), Grahame Rose (CP Plus),

The number of vehicle near-misses with trains at level crossings increased by 15% in 2010, according to figures released by Network Rail. There were 3,446-recorded incidents of misuse at level crossings in the UK last year. Whilst the number of near misses is up, actual collisions with trains has halved from 14 in 2009 to seven in 2010. Fatalities were also down from 13 to four. Network Rail wants drivers to change their behaviour at level crossings where motorists and pedestrians break the la

As an unique policing environment, the transport system has a unique set of needs. To meet them, an independent body, the British Transport Police (BTP), monitors the tracks, trains and stations, and provides a vital service to rail operators, their staff and passengers in making the system secure and safe. With its team of 2,914 officers and 1,455 support staff, the force covers the rail system in England, Wales and Scotland, including London Underground, Docklands Light Railway, the Glasgow

The British Parking Awards, sponsored by Equita, celebrated their tenth anniversary with what is widely regarded as the best event yet. On 11 March a sell-out audience of over 520 people gathered at The InterContinental on London’s Park Lane to hear Hugh Dennis, star of Outnumbered and Mock the Week, reveal which of the 80 entrants to the 2011 awards had secured the much coveted cut-glass trophies. The competition, organised by Parking Review magazine and sponsored by debt recovery specia

Charges are to be introduced at Croy railway station, Scotland’s largest park & ride, just months after it opened a free site. North Lanarkshire Council opened the 700-space facility in February to encourage more people to take the train between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The council is to introduce a £1 daily fee for park & ride, which is expected to rise to £2 after residents’ parking zones are established in the area. The parking charges have been criticised by m

Stoke-on-Trent City Council is considering plans to open up some of its staff car parks to ease congestion around Stoke City football club’s Britannia Stadium on match-days. The initiative seeks to encourage supporters to use public transport. Supporters would be charged £3 to park, will also include their bus travel to and from the ground. The incentive scheme is being looked into after the authority completed an investigation into parking issues around the stadium. A council spo

The British Parking Awards 2011 will mark a decade of celebrating excellence in the parking sector.  The short list for the British Parking Awards 2011 has been unveiled. The winners of the annual competition, organised by Parking Review and sponsored by Equita, will be revealed by Hugh Dennis, star of Outnumbered and Mock the Week, at the InterContinental, Park Lane, on Friday 11 March. The shortlisting process has involved all 80 entrants being assessed and discussed by a panel of judge

Metric has won an order to supply South West Trains with a new generation of cashless pay & display parking machines which are being introduced at 37 station car parks on the network. The 115 Aura machines will be rolled out in an installation programme due to be completed by May. South West Trains is delivering an additional 2,000 car parking spaces by 31 May as part of its car park expansion programme. Metric’s UK sales and marketing manager, Richard Boultbee, says: “Providing

Nottinghamshire County Council is trialling what is believed to be the first ‘pocket’ park & ride site in the UK in a bid to cut congestion and carbon emissions. The car park at Cotgrave Welfare Club, Rushcliffe, provides 33 free parking spaces between 7am and 7pm with bus services to Nottingham and West Bridgford. The council spent £17,000 on improvements to the car park, including the installation of CCTV, with adjacent bus stops and signage. It will pay the club &poun

There is a clear and pressing need for MPs to ask Parliamentary Questions on the expenditure on car parking at stations. Generally any car park enhancements represent an ‘improvement’ which Network Rail (NR) brings in through its asset register, reimbursing the train operating company (TOC) or other funder. The costs for this are added to the bill that we, as taxpayers, pay out via the Department for Transport’s settlement for NR's capital programme. Naturally NR recoups this

The short list for the British Parking Awards 2011 has been agreed. The winners of the annual competition, organised by Parking Review and sponsored by Equita, will be revealed by comedian Hugh Dennis at the InterContinental, Park Lane, on Friday 11 March. Hugh Dennis is the star of the award-winning BBC sitcom Outnumbered and the stand-up show Mock the Week. The British Parking Awards 2011 will mark a decade of celebrating excellence in the parking sector. Over 80% tables booked To

Stoke-on-Trent City Council is considering opening up some of its staff car parks to ease congestion around Stoke City Football Club’s Britannia Stadium on match days. The initiative would seek to encourage supporters to use public transport to reach the ground from the car parks. Supporters would be charged £3 to park, with the fee also including bus travel to and from the ground. The incentive scheme was developed by the authority following an investigation into parking issues aro

More than 80 entries are vying for the top prizes in the British Parking Awards 2011, organised by Parking Review and sponsored by Equita. Over the past decade the annual awards have recognised the best in parking management, design and innovation. The field this year is one of the most competitive ever, reports Parking Review managing editor Mark Moran, who coordinates the competition. “When one considers the facilities being entered in New Car Park and Best Refurbishment categories, th

Parking charges across hundreds of rail station car parks throughout England have seen rises of more than double the rate of inflation. Train operators have been accused by motoring groups and commuters of making excessive profits by increasing the cost of parking. Commuters and motoring groups say that such rises are excessive and bigger than increases in train fares, which averaged 6.2% across the network. Many of the biggest increases in charges have been at stations in the Home Countie

The fact that the Safer Parking Scheme is now six years old with nearly 5,000 accredited car parks nationwide is cause to celebrate. Since its launch in 2004 the scheme has gone from strength-to-strength and the blue and white tick has become a familiar brand across the country. It is important to remember that today’s motorist is a consumer and we have all become ‘brand aware’. Brand awareness is a key element of all our lives today. This is why the Safer Parking Scheme has a

Belfast’s Cairnshill park & ride began operating services in November after a four-month delay. The 700-space £8m scheme on the A24 at Cairnshill was due to be launched in July, but was held up while a deal was signed with bus operator the Translink Group. The service uses new and extended bus lanes from the site to the city. The service runs every 15 minutes between 7am and 7pm Monday to Friday. A return ticket costs £2.50. In addition there will also be priority bus la

Coaches should be allowed to drive in bus lanes, argues the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT). The CPT states London’s Theatreland permits the use of bus lanes by coaches, which helps reduce congestion around the capital. A new CPT report called Britain’s Coaches: Delivering Prosperity to You says coach tourism is worth £2.35 billion to Britain’s economy and could be worth even more with investment in better facilities by local government. Towns, cities, reso

The parking decks at Birmingham International railway station have been waterproofed by USL StructureCare. The car park is owned by Network Rail. Over 14,000m2 of Conideck waterproofing and 100 metres of StructureCare UCP joint details were combined to provide watertight decks. The waterproofing had to work around the installation of wind turbines on the roof level of the car park. USL StructureCare director John?Taylor said: “It is our aim to offer owners of multi-store car parks a o

To celebrate ten years of the British Parking Awards, Parking Review and Equita will be naming the previous Equita Overall Award winner which is felt to best represent the aims and ideals of the competition. The tenth anniversary gala lunch will be held in London on Friday 11 March 2011. One of the highlights will be the presentation of a special award to the “best of the best” from the past ten years. The Equita Overall Winner Award is the most coveted trophy, presented as it is t

A new park & ride service is being offered to enable visitors to avoid increased parking charges at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. Canterbury City Council is working with the East Kent University Hospitals NHS Trust to provide the service. This follows the decision to increase the cost of on-site parking and staff permits at the 289-space hospital site. Parking charges at the hospital have gone up from £6?to  £8 a day. The new weekday bus service uses spare capacity a

Car park refurbishment contractor Matrix has won both a series of major contracts this year and a top prize at the British Parking Awards 2010. The Bristol-based company won the Best Refurbishment Award at the annual competition in recognition of its work modernising Woking?Borough Council’s town centre multi-storey car parks. Works carried out over three years included structural alterations to make the car parks more user-friendly, conversion to pay-on-foot, redecoration, application of

Rail travellers parking at East Coast mainline stations can now  pay for their parking by phone. East Coast is the twelfth train company to provide the RingGo service. RingGo now claims to account for 90% of phone parking across the UK rail network. “RingGo works well in this market because it uses voice response,” says RingGo marketing manager Anne Snelson. “People don’t want to spend time talking to a call centre when they are rushing to catch a train. They just

China’s love affair with the car, a product of its growing economy, is starting to spawn problems such as congestion and pollution. Last month a traffic jam stretching for 100km (62 miles) between Beijing and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region lasted for ten days. Massive traffic problems are now spawning radical transport solutions, such as “bus catamarans”, vehicles which would allow cars and other low vehicles to pass beneath them, reducing traffic congestion. According

The British Parking Awards, sponsored by Equita, celebrate their tenth birthday with what is expected to be the biggest and best competition yet. One of the highlights of the tenth anniversary gala lunch, to be held in London on Friday 11 March 2011, will be the presentation of a special award to be “best of the best” from the past ten years. Run by Parking Review magazine, the competition and its gala awards lunch are now the highlight of the parking year. Mark Moran, managing edit

Combined cycle and rail travel is getting easier for passengers who use rail stations in London, as Transport for London (TfL) increases cycle parking facilities increase across the London Overground network. TfL is providing funding for cycle parking facilities at Overground stations where no facilities currently exist to encourage shorter journeys to be taken by bike. There will be parking spaces for nearly 500 bikes to be parked at Overground stations by next year. Cycle journeys on London&

Travel 2020 29-30 September, Brit Oval, London Innovative payment solutions which make use of the internet and mobile phones will be showcased at Travel 2020. The two-day conference and exhibition will explore new ways in which transport providers, highways managers and parking operators can enhance service delivery and customer experience. The conference will be opened by transport minister Norman Baker and its streams will cover themes such as real-time information, cashless payment technol

East Riding District Council has equipped its new park & ride facility in Bridlington with pay stations from Cale BriParc. Five Cale BriParc MPC104 payment terminals have been installed. The Cale terminals were selected because of their advanced ‘Scrolling Tariff’ capability, says Cale BriParc’s sales director Richard Parsons. “The user presses a single scrolling selection button according to the number of passengers that will be travelling on the park & ride bus

Anyone reading the press or listening to the radio and TV news at the end of last month would have had good reason to believe that local authorities across Britain were all gearing up to launch a wave of workplace parking levy (WPL) schemes, which would impose a new layer of local taxation on businesses. The Parking Review in-tray started filling up with press releases containing often anguished calls for a stop on what would be an unfair tax on motorists and struggling companies from organisat

Stockport Council has celebrated its 250,000th passenger on the town’s Metroshuttle, which links up car parks, shops and other attractions in the Lancashire town. Launched in November 2008, the council and Greater Manchester Integrated Transport Authority (GMITA) organised the free service as part of the Stockport Boost campaign, to assist shoppers and tourists travel around the town. www.stockport.gov.uk/boost

NCP has taken over the management of Ashford International’s car parks on behalf of train operator High Speed 1 (HS1). HS1 owns St Pancras International, the High Speed 1 railway and the international stations at Stratford, Ebbsfleet and Ashford. High Speed 1 is the UK’s first section of the high speed railway carrying both domestic and international services from central London to the Channel Tunnel. NCP’s new contract covers parking for Southeastern and Eurostar custome

Unusually for a transport minister, Norman Baker appears to have a sound grasp of parking-related topics, even though he has been in office for just two months. He is outspoken about what he sees as the sector’s shortcomings, and holds forthright opinions on how it can improve. This may have something to do with his long-running spat with East Sussex County Council over the parking scheme in Lewes, where he is an MP (see panel). He was also the Lib Dem transport spokesman before becoming a

From Space 1999’s lunar shuttle tubes to the driverless cars in Minority Report and the comic pods of Woody Allen’s Sleeper, the concept of the travel pod has long been a staple of science fiction. Now, for airline passengers heading to London Heathrow Airport at least, the travel pod dream is a reality. Until June passengers parking at Heathrow’s N3 business car park who wanted to get to and from Terminal 5 had to use a shuttle bus. But not any more. Now passengers heading Ter

Boris Johnson is a keen cyclist. His enthusiasm for two-wheeled travel stems back to his days as an MP and has been carried over into his role as mayor of London. This enthusiasm is manifesting itself in initiatives such as the Cycle Superhighways, the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme and additional cycle parking at train stations. The mayor has also sought to find ways of tackling the problem of cycle crime. The mayor’s reaction has been to publish a Draft Cycle Security Plan in conjunction wi

Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) is a keen advocate of  park & ride, operating rail and bus-based schemes across its public transport network, which includes Glasgow Subway, rail stations and the express bus park & ride on the M8. This provision is to expand in significantly with the creation of 10 strategic park & ride sites across west central Scotland. Last year SPT was allowed to bring forward £5m of capital spending from its allocation for 2010/11 financia

IC2 CCTV, a Kent-based security specialist, has completed the installation of wireless redeployable cameras from 802 Global in three park & ride car parks for Maidstone Borough Council. While Maidstone Police feel the council’s overall CCTV operation to be effective, the three P&R sites in question — Sittingbourne Road, London Road and Moat Road — had no CCTV system in place.  It was felt that increasing the number of site attendants was not cost effective. Maidst

Virgin Trains’ modernisation of parking infrastructure at stations on its West Coast Mainline has seen out-of-date and unreliable parking management equipment being replaced. The train operator selected APT Skidata as the technology supplier, with the APT 460 series pay-on-foot system being installed at over a dozen station car parks along the route between London Euston and Glasgow Central. Mike Bones, project manager for Virgin Trains, said: “To grow the number of passengers using

A series of new multi-storey car parks has been built by Network Rail as part of a £90m upgrade of parking facilities along the West Coast Mainline, which runs between London Euston and Glasgow Central. The route, which is operated by Virgin Trains, is one of the busiest rail lines in the UK, and a lack of adequate parking facilities at key stations was regarded as suppressing passenger numbers. Virgin Trains reviewed demand forecasts to determine revised parking at the stations, which led

Leicester City Council is set to offer local businesses incentives to boost patronage of its newest park & ride service at Enderby. The authority is hoping to encourage firms to buy bus tickets for their staff. Employers would be given incentives, such as tax breaks, to encourage their workers to take the bus to work through “salary sacrifice” schemes. The number of people using the 1,000-space park & ride, near junction 21 of the M1, has been disappointing since its launc

Although he still talks and writes about cars, it is really many years since Jeremy Clarkson could be regarded as a motor journalist. In reality, Clarkson is an entertainer. This is clear in the way that BBC’s Top?Gear is no longer the consumer programme of yore, with elaborate stunts and a Boy’s Own comic tone replacing discussions of fuel consumption and warranties. Top Gear is top entertainment. On the telly, Clarkson’s posturing is clearly an act, with his fellow 40-somet

A new parking deck has been added to the Haddenham & Thame Parkway in Oxfordshire by Chiltern Railways. The new deck gives the station an extra 226 car parking spaces, which nearly doubles the number of spaces available to motorists. Haddenham & Thame Parkway, is situated near the M40 and just a 45-minute train journey into London Marylebone. The structure was designed and built by steel-frame car park supplier Condec. The car park’s modular construction meant it could be ere

Car park operator NCP has replaced the Fastpark pay-by-phone service with the RingGo system in car parks across the country. The new system was launched on 29 March at more than 100 car parks owned by NCP, as well as another 100 car parks managed by NCP for the four train operating companies Arriva Trains, C2C, National Express East Anglia and Transpennine Express. The Fastpark brand had been provided by phone payment supplier Verrus for the past three years. NCP commercial director Jo Cooper

WPS-UK launched several new products at Parkex 2010, including an  Integrated Ticket Management System (ITMS) and the WPS Park & Recharge system for electric cars  The WPS ITMS Barrier-less Entry Park & Ride Solution allows site operators to ensure car park occupation is solely and exclusively by those using the bus service. It is being used at the Enderby Park &?Ride site in Leicestershire, which won two trophies at the British Parking Awards 2010. There are no barriers

Terry Wogan, Tom Baker and Ozzy Osbourne will all be presenting the British Parking Awards 2010, yet only one person will be in the spotlight. Leading impressionist Jon Culshaw will host the gala lunch which takes place on 12 March at the InterContinental Hotel on Park Lane in London’s Mayfair. The awards, organised by Parking Review, have showcased and recognised excellence in the UK parking sector for the past nine years. The awards are sponsored by civil enforcement agent Equita and su

After 20 years of service to Newcastle City Council Neil Cuthbert left the authority at the end of 2009, having taken voluntary retirement. Cuthbert leaves behind a highly regarded parking department, which has come a long way since his appointment. Cuthbert has managed the service since 2001 and has overseen projects that are developing the service in a number of different ways.  New ethos One of Cuthbert’s first tasks on joining the parking team was to implement a thorough proces

Over the coming years parking cars on a Ferris wheel, parking on the side of buildings or even in inflated balloons hovering above the ground could all be part of everyday life. At least, they would be if designs showcased by car maker Nissan are ever actually realised. Nissan has run an international design competition encouraging innovative ideas which challenge current assumptions about parking and specifically how the space in urban areas can be maximised. The competition, which was hosted

The new 300-space park & ride site in Cardiff has proven to be “extremely popular” with the public, according to the city council. Since its launch on 19 October, the weekly number of cars using the service has more than doubled, with 1,548 drivers using the service from 16 to 22 November, according to a council spokesman. Cardiff East Park & Ride,  just off the A48(M),  forms part of Pentwyn Interchange scheme. The service provides access to the east of the Welsh

A new multi-storey car park features in plans for a major revamp at Derby railway station. The  £3m renovation plan will be funded by Midlands Development Agency, Derby City Council, the European Regional Development Fund,  Network Rail and the Railway Heritage Trust. The improvements are being overseen by Derby Cityscape, a not-for-profit urban regeneration company. The first phase of the work will include more parking spaces for bicycles, and a new taxi rank and bus terminu

Off-airport parking company Airparks has appointed Ian Jarvis as business development executive, a new role within the business. Jarvis previously worked in the publishing and media sales sector with Waverley Communications. He over ten years’ sales and management experience during his career, including positions with BG Plating and Dunraven Finance. “I am looking forward to growing revenue for Airparks and have set myself some ambitious targets for the first year,” Jarvis s

There is a good case for arguing that inter-urban roads could be financed by road charges. One point that needs to be included in this debate is nothing to do with roads. It is what should be done, as the country's population grows by another ten million, to cater for more cars at the origins and destinations of their journeys. Space for parking in Britain's suburbs, cities and even villages is already in short supply. Cars are crammed into all sorts of unlikely places. Many are parked on foot

Car parking facilities at ten major rail stations will be upgraded under a £50m modernisation scheme announced by transport secretary Lord Adonis. The refurbishment works at stations such as Manchester Victoria, Liverpool Central, Clapham Junction and Barking in London and Crewe in Cheshire will see the creation of new shops, better public areas and improved interchanges with other transport modes. The announcement followed Network Rail committing to spend £3.25 billion on improvin

Rugby railway station in Warwickshire has been undergoing a complete refurbishment. The works have included the building of a new multi-storey car, which is part of the ongoing build programme of new car parks for Network Rail’s operator, Virgin Trains. The 500-space car park was built by main contractor Osbourne. Specialist sub-contractor Radflex Contract Services supplied and installed its S100 jointing systems on the car park decks.

Network Rail’s new multi-storey car park at Preston Station, which opened in June, is one of the first of a scheme of new car parks to coincide with the West Coast Mainline station facility upgrade. Within the programmes set to improve parking at all 17 stations managed by Virgin Trains on the West Coast route, there will be a number of new car parks created, some of which will be surface car parks and other MSCPs. The specifications of the car parks being built by Network Rail for Virg

A new car parking facility at Narborough train station in Leicestershire was given safer parking status at its official opening last month. The car park was built by Blaby District Council. Its facilities include cycle shelters, CCTV, recycling bins and solar powered pay & display machines. It was awarded with the Park Mark status having passed a risk assessment by police on security and design. Sandra Whiles, chief executive of Blaby District Council, said: “We can all feel proud t

Entries are now being sought for the British Parking Awards three main infrastructure and design categories — Best New Car Park, Best Refurbishment and the APCOA Living Streets Awards. The Best New Car Park category is open to multi-storey, underground and surface sites, which became operational since July 2008. The current holder of the Best New Car Park title is the Bicester Shopping?Village car park, designed by Lyons+Sleeman+Hoare Architects. A specific Best Surface Car?Park trophy w

Parking Review is celebrating its 20 birthday next month. The parking sector’s leading news magazine was launched in 1989 and has established itself as a source of independent and expert news, intelligence, comment and analysis. The December edition of Parking Review will mark two decades of being at the heart of debate in the sector. Where were you 20 years ago? The Parking Review team would be delighted to find out what its readers were doing in 1989. Please send us your experiences, t

Nearly 60% of drivers give pay-by-phone parking facilities the thumbs-down, a survey by the AA suggests. Inflexibility, mistrust and confusion are the key concerns for drivers, says the motoring body. The removal of the cash option, as is happening in Westminster, is deeply unpopular. More than two-thirds of AA members (67%) say that pay-by-phone parking should be accompanied by payment machines. “Penalising users who have not registered, both local residents and visitors, is not only un

Rail passengers using Rugby station’s new multi-storey car park have complained that  parking charges have increased by more than 30%. The price of an annual season ticket to the Virgin Trains operated Rugby Station, in Warwickshire (above), has gone up from £655 to £858 while the daily parking rate has risen by £1 to £7. The increases have been criticised by the Rugby Rail Users Group, which said: “The rise could not be justified when rail ticket pric

Train operator First Capital Connect (FCC) has opted to use the RingGo phone parking system supplied by Cobalt?Telephone Technologies. RingGo replaced incumbent phone-by-phone supplier Verrus on 1 October at all 40 stations including  Bedford, Hatfield, Hendon Kings Lynn, Luton, New Barnet, Palmers Green and St Albans. The station car parks are operated for FCC by National Car Parks. Michelle Smart, FCC’s director for marketing, communications and customer information, said: “

A new car park has opened on the site of the former Wellington bus station by Trelford & Wrekin Council. The Nailmakers Row Car Park provides 55 spaces and three disabled spaces. The new car park is accessed off Victoria Road and it will operate on a one-way system. The car park was created by contractor Blackwells adjacent to the town’s new bus station. Eric Carter, cabinet member for Regeneration said: “With the new Nailmakers Row Car Park and Wellington Bus Station open, the

The fate of the country’s first workplace parking levy (WPL) will rest with the Conservatives – if they win the next General Election. Nottingham City Council’s plan to introduce the levy to part-fund extensions to the city’s light rail system have moved a step closer with transport secretary Sadiq Khan confirming the WPL Order and granting conditional approval to the light rail extensions to Chilwell and Clifton. But Khan has delayed the introduction of the parking lev

Tony Wakeling has joined RCP Parking in the newly created position of general manager. Prior to joining Norwich-based RCP, he awas director of off-street and airport operations for APCOA Parking. Reporting to RCP Parking managing director Shapoor Naghshineh, Wakeling will oversee operations of the family-run company’s portfolio of UK car parks, which range from airports, shopping centres, leisure complexes and railway stations to offices, development sites and schools. “RCP Parking

Alpha Parking has been commissioned by West Sussex County Council to conduct parking surveys in the Three Bridges area of Crawley. The study focusses on a proposed extension of a controlled parking zone (CPZ) to coincide with the implementation of civil parking enforcement (CPE) in January next year. While its roots stretch back to Medieval times, Crawley expanded in Post-War into a New Town. With 100,000 residents it is now the second largest conurbation in Sussex, with Gatwick Airport being t

Mirada, an interactive services specialist, has launched the Connect brand, with the aim of raising the profile of its established phone parking technology. Mirada Connect is a member of the Mirada group, which has UK headquarters and offices in Spain, Italy and Uruguay. Mirada has a considerable record in public sector services delivery for local, regional and central government. It provides cross-platform interactive solutions and has managed payments across a number of sectors, including TV t

RingGo is a phone parking system developed by Cobalt Telephone Technologies which is now used by local authorities, private operators and a number of rail companies to provide an alterative to cash-based parking. “The secret of phone parking is it has to be quick and flawless,” says Harry Clarke, RingGo’s commercial director. “People want to park and not have a PCN when they come back to their car. That is the sort of system you need to design.” The first ever Ring

Metric Parking can point to a long and successful track record in Scotland. If not quite stretching back to the era of William Wallace or Robert the Bruce, the Swindon-based company can lay claim to having helped pioneer on-street payment north of the border. The company has installations throughout Scotland, with machines to be found in places such as Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling, Fife, Perth, Western Isles and the only manufacturer with machines supplied to the Orkney & Shetland Isles. The

Vincent James has joined design and build contractor Composite as business development director. He previously held similar positions with ISG InteriorExterior and Gleeson, where he focused on clients with design and build, PFI and PPP projects. Prior to that he was sales and marketing director with John Laing Construction.

The Safer Parking Scheme has has now issued over 4,000 Park Marks. The Park?Mark ‘tick’ logo is granted to parking facilities that have achieved the requirements of a risk assessment conducted by the police. These require the parking operator to put in place measures that help to deter criminal activity and anti-social behaviour, thereby doing everything they can to prevent crime and reduce the fear of crime.  The scheme was devised by the Association of Chief Police Officers

South West Trains has expanded the car park at Wokingham station to provide a further 150 spaces. There is also increased CCTV surveillance and better lighting throughout the car park. Re-modelling of the existing car park and some minor infrastructure work created the new spaces. The work at Wokingham Station is part of South West Trains, £20m car park expansion programme to provide improved facilities and at least 2,000 extra car parking spaces across the network. At the official open

Malcolm Buchanan of transport planning consultant Colin Buchanan & Partners was awarded PTRC’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the TPM Conference in Reading. Later this year, Buchanan will be retiring from the company, which was founded by his father. However, he will continue to advise on projects.

Excel Parking Services has started managing the Pride Park park & ride in Derby. The city council awarded Excel a five-year contract to run the 1,100-space car park, which is  located adjacent to Derby County Football Club’s stadium to the east of the city Motorists pay £2.20 to park at Pride Park and then travel to and from the centre via a dedicated bus service. The buses run on a 10 to 15 minute frequency from 7am to 7pm.

Peter Cowlard and Cliff Weston outline the benefits of liquid-applied waterproofing systems Car parks with suspended decks need good protection from the adverse effects of corrosion on steel-reinforced concrete. This is something that those designing, building and maintaining car parks are well aware of. But how many know where to look for impartial expert advise on how this may be best achieved? Liquid-applied car decking products, designed to offer alternative concrete waterproofing to tradi

A pair of wind turbines have been erected on the roof of Preston station multi-storey car park. The are being installed by Galliford Try for Network Rail. Standing 12 metres high, the QR5 vertical axis turbines are designed for use in urban environments with low wind speeds and changeable wind directions. Energy output will be between 6,000 and 10,000 kWhrs (kilowatt hours) per turbine. The steel-framed car park has 765 spaces and consists of pre-cast and in situ concrete composite decks with a

A range of fast acting barriers for upmarket locations has been launched by APT Security Systems. APT said its Executive range meets the needs of a niche market, said general manager Chris Rowlands. “Barriers have a practical function in controlling traffic flows and preventing unauthorised entry onto site,” he said. “But that does not mean they cannot be designed to blend with the surrounding area, or reflect on the quality of the premises they are there to protect. With busi

A solar canopy that can both shelter electric vehicles and recharge them has been developed for use in car parks, airports, shopping centres, offices and public buildings. The ‘PowerPark’ canopy, developed by Romag Holdings, consists of PowerGlaz PV solar panels that generate electricity, which can be sold to the national grid as well as for charging electric vehicles. The initiative follows on from government encouragement to develop infrastructure to support the manufacture of el

A 60-space car park is due to open at the newly opened bus and taxi interchange at Wellington train station in Shropshire. The first phase of the scheme, was the £650,000 interchange built on the Parade car park in Victoria Road. Phase two is the new car park opposite the interchange, which opens this month.

Virgin Trains is working with Network Rail to upgrade parking facilities at 17 stations along the West Coast mainline route. This £90m initiative has already seen the building of a multi-storey alongside Runcorn station. The 198 three- deck car park, which opened in May, brings the station’s capacity up to 558. The clear span, ramp decked car park was constructed by design & build contractor Composite, working in partnership with principal contractor Kier Construction. Frame co

Rail passengers are being “ripped off” by rail operators charging more than £1bn a year to park at station car parks, according to a trade union survey. The report for the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), which surveyed costs at more than 1,000 car parks in England and Scotland, describes the situation as a “scandal”. Network Rail said it does not control charges at most stations, which are run by train operators. A spokesman says: “The stations

Over 14 long disused railway lines could be economically re-opened and up to 40 stations — including new parkways — created across England, says a report from the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). Connecting Communities: Expanding Access to the Rail Network suggests that over one million people could be given improved access to train services at a time when demand for rail travel is on the rise.“Many past studies have looked at re-opening old railways, but this

Norfolk County Council has lowered park & ride costs for solo drivers in Norwich in a bid to cut traffic congestion. Five of the county’s six park & ride sites will see the cost of single car occupants reduced from £3.30 to £2 a day. For the first time the service will be free after 9.30am weekdays and at weekends for concessionary pass holders. The changes are designed to make park & ride more attractive to lone drivers, to reduce the number of cars continuing int

A number of park & ride sites are planned to serve the 2012 London Olympics, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has announced. Previously the ODA had planned to build just two huge temporary sites close to the M25. An ODA spokeswoman said: “At the time of the bid we envisaged a couple of large park & ride sites serving the Olympic Park. Subsequent analysis shows that we can provide a better level of service to customers and a more cost effective provision by using a greater num

The Safer Parking Scheme team is now using a green car as part of its fleet. Graham Chapman (right), the London and Chilterns development manager, was issued with a Honda Civic hybrid by Richard Bickell, the Safer Parking Scheme’s head of operations. It is hoped that other development managers will also be issued environmentally-friendly vehicles in the near future.

A control system that allows the remote adjustment of individual street lamps that could result in 40% savings in energy consumption has been launched. The UMSUG (unmetered supplies user group) committee of the UK wholesale electricity market managers, Elexon, has approved the LeafNut variable light system from Harvard Engineering. LeafNut features a wireless WiMAC (central management system for the recording of un-metered supply) and CMS (content management system) technology to vary the outpu

The recession provides many opportunities as well as challenges, says RCP Parking’s Shapoor Naghshineh As the credit crunch continues to squeeze the UK economy, RCP Parking is finding that more and more property companies are turning to parking as a means of extracting value from dormant sites. Managing director Shapoor Naghshineh says: “With thousands of sites nationally now standing empty — and costing landowners a fortune, year in, year out — car parking is a simple s

Parking operators should not forget the hard-of-hearing, says Ampetronic’s Ken Hollands Is providing assistive listening systems on car park intercoms a waste of money? If providing disabled parking spaces was described as a waste of money there would, rightly so, be an outcry. But when you consider that physically disabled people make up 1.4% of the adult population whereas those with a hearing disability account for a massive 14%, the imbalance becomes clear. True you do not have

The expanded park & ride site at Sutton Coldfield rail station in the West Midlands has opened six months ahead of schedule. The facility now has 186 spaces after the purchase of a parcel of land to create an extra 37 spaces at the Chester Road rail station by transport authority Centro. A Centro spokeswoman said: “We identified a gap in the building programme, which meant we could bring forward the work. There is a very high demand for parking spaces in the park & ride at Chest

Cambridgeshire County Council is looking at the idea of using a “personal transport system” to link a park & ride site with nearby developments. The idea is for a route from the Milton park & ride site on the A10 to the proposed Chesterton railway station and nearby Science Park. The technology being considered is the ULTra personal transit system which is currently being used at Heathrow Airport. An 18km ULTra system could cost around £35m, the manufacturer of the sy

Dean Harvey has been appointed operations manager at national gritting services company Ice Watch. Harvey was previously an operations manager for an Ipswich-based courier company. The Ice Watch team he now heads has expanded, with ten new site operatives joining the company. The company has contracts across the UK, with clients being signed in areas as far apart as Devon and the East Riding of Yorkshire.

In last month’s Parking Review Portsmouth’s Michael Robinson questioned the effectiveness of the Safer Parking Scheme. Here the BPA’s Kelvin Reynolds challenges Robinson’s assertions. There are more effective ways to reduce crime than the Safer Parking Scheme, argues Michael Robinson. But is he right? Or is it he that is “wide of the Mark”? Of course Park Mark and the Safer Parking Scheme do not in themselves reduce crime, but all of the management practices

Having scooped the Enforcement Team of the Year Award, Tewkesbury Borough Council went on to be named the Equita Overall Winner at the British Parking Awards 2009. The winners were revealed by Strictly Come Dancing star John Sergeant during a gala lunch held at The Dorchester on 6 March. The Tewkesbury team's submission was one of the most dramatic. "Prior to taking over responsibility for decriminalised enforcement, the council's new Parking Services team found itself helping with the h

Andrew Potter, chief executive of National Car Parks, gets a feel for the day-to-day realities of the car park business whenever he goes to work. Not only is his office at Croydon retail mall The Whitgift Centre adjacent to one of the 731 car parks his company operates, it sits below its high-tech National Operations Centre (NOC), a room decked out with TV monitors relaying views from the majority of those locations. Potter has been in charge of the UK’s largest off-street parking operato

An independent online rating scheme will enable drivers to check out the services offered by car parks. Ratings and reviews will be posted on the website along with car park details and locations. The company behind the scheme, Star Park, says that it hopes the star system will complement the Park?Mark awarded by the Safer Parking Scheme, which was created by the Association of Chief Police Officers and run by the British Parking Association (BPA). Star Park is offering to review public car pa

Top political correspondent and, following Strictly Come Dancing, national treasure John Sergeant will be the host of this year’s British Parking Awards ceremony. The presentation of the winners’ trophies will take place at The Dorchester on London’s Park Lane at lunchtime on Friday 6 March. Launched by Parking Review in 2002, the awards recognise and reward excellence in the design and management of parking operations, as well as highlight the special contributions of individ

Has free travel killed park & ride? Anyone remember that new Labour pledge of “100 new park & ride sites by 2010”? It will perhaps come as little surprise that progress towards this very challenging target, is behind schedule. Is it a lack of funding, have all the obvious sites been developed or has there been any other external factor at play that has changed our attitude to park & ride? The period 2001 to 2006 saw 51 new sites open — below the target of 60. To ke

Manchester Airport has opened a second valet parking service. The new service at?Terminal 2 follows positive feedback from the launch of Terminal 1 valet parking last January, said director of car parks, Andrew Harrison. Cars are valet parked at the Park Mark awarded car park and delivered back to customers at a dedicated VIP enclosure. The move is part of the airport’s drive to further improve customer experience and cut “kiss & fly” trips to the airport. “Obviousl

The Nottingham ParkSmart Project aims to establish a comprehensive car park guidance signing strategy by linking traffic management and destination management for five  zones in the city centre.  Nottingham City Council has placed an order with Siemens for the supply, installation, commission and servicing of 44 modular, single-pole variable message signs (VMS) and 40 non-VMS advanced directional signs in and around the centre of Nottingham. All of the signs have been designed and t

Four years after its very first trial implementation at Bristol Parkway railway station, the RingGo implementation team has arrived back in the heart of the city to undertake a roll-out for the local council. Starting on the 17 December the phone parking system is to be introduced at the majority of on and off-street parking bays managed by Bristol City Council. The introduction will begin in the streets around the iconic Wills Memorial Building part of the University campus in Clifton. 

Compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) will be used  by Bath and North East Somerset Council to buy  gardens along a rapid bus transit (BRT) route. The plots in Lower Weston are needed to develop the BRT’s proposed route between Newbridge and a new park & ride site at Bathampton, to the east of the city. The BRT would use tyred articulated vehicles running on a segregated lane. The CPOs were approved at a council meeting on the 21 November amid protests from residents and Respo

The business community has largely welcomed the government’s draft plans to relax planning rules in England in order to foster economic development. Two of the most hotly debated parts of the proposals concern the proposed abolition of national maximum parking standards and a relaxation of the ‘town centre first’ policy for new office development. More than 300 organisations from the public and private sectors have responded to the Department for Communities and Local Governme

Free ‘goodie’ bags containing fruit juice and muffins were distributed to commuters at the launch of free parking at Oxford’s park & ride sites. Oxfordshire County Council introduced free parking at Seacourt, Pear Tree and Redbridge park & ride sites on 3 October. The county council had introduced free parking at its Water Eaton and Thornhill sites in 2005.  The change to free parking is the result of the county council taking on responsibility for the other thre

Building or extending station car parks used to be simple. You cleared the rusty rails or vegetation from the disused goods yard and laid the tarmac. Static demand for rail travel, or modest growth, meant your new spaces would suffice for years to come. Not any more. Demand for rail travel is soaring, especially on local trains serving cities where motorists are deterred by traffic congestion and the perceived high cost of city centre parking. Most disused railway land beside stations has alrea

The mobile phone is increasingly being used to pay for parking at rail stations thanks to a partnership between NCP and mobile payment provider Verrus. NCP — which now manages car parks for seven train operating companies (TOCs) — is encouraging the use of the Verrus system as an alternative to pay & display. The cashless payment system has been rolled out at sites owned by ARRIVA Trains Wales, National Express, C2C, FCC, Trans Pennine Express, East Midlands and Virgin Trains.

With the number of passengers cycling to stations on the rise, the need to offer organised parking for them is increasing. There are a variety of cycle shelters available from companies such as Autopa, including the options of open-sided units for easy access or fully enclosed for extra security. Galvanised shelters, with colour coated finishes are available. A selection of new cycle shelters recently added to the Autopa range include Boston and Bolton Cycle Shelters, as well as the VS1 shelter,

The Department for Transport has published a Code of Practice on Accessible Train and Station Design for Disabled Passengers. This outlines a single set of design standards across the entire rail network. The code will help ensure access and safety for disabled passengers and will provide guidance for train and station operators providing examples of best practice. It highlights the design and location of car parks and set-down/pick-up areas at stations. Rail minister Tom Harris said: “

The reputation of Swansea’s first park & ride scheme is being enhanced this month with the opening of a “fast track” to take P&R buses out of traffic congestion. The Landore P&R car park, 1.5 miles north of the city centre, has 550 spaces and is open from 6.45am to 7.30pm Mondays to Saturdays. Buses operate every 12 or 15 minutes during the day, but at peak times can be caught in traffic congestion along Neath Road and the Dyfatty junction. This traffic blackspot

Network Rail has switched from the Verrus to the RingGo mobile phone system for the parking areas at Victoria station in central London. The move brings Victoria in-line with a number of other major railway stations across the country such as Paddington and Waterloo in London, Glasgow Central and Manchester Piccadilly, which are also switching to the RingGo phone parking service as part of a nationwide implementation by enforcement company APCOA Parking. “We are delighted to be launching

The concept of “eco-towns” has been a troubled one since it was unveiled earlier this year. The government is promoting these communities of between 5,000 and 20,000 properties as both a solution to housing shortages and a way of demonstrating how to build environmentally-friendly communities which use innovative building techniques, planning policies and transport provision to show how urban living can have a lower carbon footprint. Inevitably, that means car-free living. However,

Six National Express East Anglia rail station car parks in Essex have received Park Mark accreditation under the Safer Parking award scheme. The NCP-run car parks include Brentwood, Harold Wood, Hatfield Peverel, Ingatestone, Shenfield and Southend Victoria. NCP and National Express East Anglia have worked in partnership with the British Transport Police. Clive Morris, business director, Metro & Southend for National Express East Anglia, said: “Park Mark recognises that operators are

Parking capacity at the new East Midlands Parkway rail station will be 850 spaces, up from the 500 spaces initially proposed. The new station, due to open in December, is situated off the A453 at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, one mile from the M1. Network Rail primarily funds the £25.5m project, with a funding contribution of almost £1m from the East Midlands Development Agency. East Midlands Trains also contributed towards the additional 350 car parking spaces at the station. APCOA Parking

Train operators could be key partners in the development of mass bike hire schemes, a cycling expert from the Dutch national railway told a conference in London last month. State railway NS bought cycle hire company OV-fiets five months ago to encourage commuters to switch from cars to cycles. Kaj Mook, NS’s director of cycle hire company OV-fiets, said the business case for the investment was that bike hire would make train travel increasingly popular rather than seeking to make a profit

Rail Parking continues to be an important area of operations for RCP Parking, both in its East Anglian heartland and elsewhere in the UK. Rail passengers travelling between Norwich and London Liverpool Street can spot RCP Parking signs and the firm’s distinctive flags alongside the line at Norwich (Lower Clarence Road), Diss and Marks Tey, near Colchester. The three rail-side car parks offer a total of more than 600 spaces, and RCP managing director Shapoor Naghshineh is bidding to inc

A 1,000-space park & ride site has been included in plans for an urban extension to Plymouth that has been given outline planning permission by South Hams District Council. The new settlement at Sherford would cover a 490-hectare site and the plan provides for up to 5,500 new dwellings. The plan has been submitted by developer Red Tree. It is the first of its size to be approved under the Local Development Framework (LDF) system, which replaces local development plans. The LDF policy that c

Meteor is to offer its park & ride service for passengers to Southampton airport. The firm has struck a deal with airport parking operator Boomerang to offer the service from its secure car park near the airport. The car park, which is monitored by CCTV, is ‘self-park’ and travellers will be able to use Meteor’s bus service for a free transfer to and from the airport. The service runs on demand 24 hours a day and is wheelchair accessible.

Plans for a £1.2m railway station in Corby, Northamptonshire, include proposals for a 140-space car park, a taxi rank and bus interchange. The scheme proposal was submitted to Corby Borough Council by North Northants Development Company (NDDC) and English Partnerships (EP). The application follows the Department for Transport announcement that Corby will be included in the new East Midlands rail franchise. A rail line runs through Corby but there is no station at the town, and it is a min

First York has won its bid to run City of York’s five park & ride services for another five years from the spring of 2008. The bus operator came out on top in the tender exercise ahead of the other two bidders Veolia and Go North East. First York has provided York’s park & ride service to the city since 1995. The new contract will see an improved service, with a fleet of 30 new articulated and rigid EEV low emission compliant vehicles with four more buses in the fleet tha