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Flashback no. 1: Traffic wardens may soon man radar speed traps under new powers to give them more power as police auxiliaries, as I wrote in The SUN on May 5, l967, more than 40 years ago.
Flashback no. 2: Traffic wardens were urged to be positive - and distribute maps showing off-street parking facilities, as I wrote in The SUN on April 26, l968.
Flashback no. 3: Traffic wardens are no more. They are to be known as 'civil enforcement officers', as The Sunday Times reported on June 11, 2006. All councils in London and nearly l50 local authorities in England then decriminalised parking offences, making parking regulations enforced by civilian staff rather than traffic wardens employed by the police. The idea was to stop drivers - and local councils - consider parking enforcement to be 'a financial end in itself ... authorities should not think of enforcement as an additional form of local taxation'. But personally I think most of us still are perturbed, considering the cost of parking and the problems with owning a car, running it, paying 'road fund' tax and fuel, whether petrol or diesel, but parking problems in particular [- and the cost of parking especially at hospitals to be simply another means of subsidising the National Health Service.
Flashback no. 4: The first parking meter appeared in Mayfair, Central London, in July l958 so the parking meter is 50 years old this month. In its heyday there were 750,000, but today there are fewer than 1,000. Meters have been supplanted by pay-and-display systems
Flashback no. 5: Drivers detest what they consider to be unfair, whether by traffic wardens or civil enforcement officers, but they are after all only doing their jobs. Yet they are some of the most hated people motorists ever encounter - and in anger drivers have been known to try and run them down, to drive over their feet, to swear and curse at them and generally give them a rough, tough time. Others drivers detest include wheel clampers - and those 'fixed penalty notices'. Yet we are constantly being told - we who tax and insure our cars - are constantly being told that congestion charges are for 'the public good'. Not so, think drivers, who consider such charges to be yet another form of local taxation.
According to 'The Thunderer', perhaps better known these days as simply The Times, you don't have to be a millionaire to park in Haringey's Lordship Lane, but it helps. In one recent year more than £3-million worth of fines were issued to drivers who'd parked in Lordship Lane.
Vine Street in Hillingdon, West London, raked in almost £2-million from one CCTV camera, and Newington Green Road in Islington, West London, topped £1-million worth of fines. Fines, or penalty charge notices, amounting to £1,252,200 went to drivers said to have contravened parking regulations in George Street in Edinburgh and £378,180 to those who did the same in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow.
Penalty charges are halved if paid within two weeks. The Local Government Association believes that parking enforcement is essential to regulate urban traffic.
An association spokesman said: 'Parking regulations are to maintain road safety and keep the traffic moving. Any revenue raised from fixed penalty charges is retained locally to fund the enforcement system. Any surplus is spent on local transport investment, such as road maintenance and street lighting.'
If only .... that's what many of us wish .... There may be on-street and off-street parking spaces, yet many of us think we are being discriminated against - and wonder how we can cope with the phenomenal increase in all motoring and living costs generally
Personally I live in the country - on a main A-road. If I am able to cadge a lift to a local station, I have a choice, to travel to London's Waterloo from Wokingham or to Paddington from Reading. A number of times I have been quizzed at both terminals by market researchers, girls with questionnaires who ask me to answer 'just a few questions as we want to know how you travelled from home to your nearest station' to come to London. By car I reply. How else? Because I don't live on a bus route it's a question of cadging a lift, calling a taxi or walking - I have the choice of a five mile walk or an eight mile walk! So I chose to live in the country? Yes, but that was more than 30 years ago when congestion was less pronounced. Now I feel penalised often even though I am not adding to the congestion in London.
Up to now I haven't mentioned satellite navigation. Some systems offer traffic information and can even navigate you round congested areas. But you may need a wireless/Bluetooth mobile phone to receive the information. A motoring organisation can prove helpful in giving advice. Check out the websites of the AA, RAC and other motoring organisations - or just key in 'sat navs.,' Should you want to see and try products available, Halfords offers a huge selection of systems. Go to your nearest, largest Halfords' branch - or contact www.vehicle-engineer.com
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