Parking Weirdness
Posted: Tue 5 July, 2011 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related |4 Comments »At the moment I’m commuting to London on a daily basis, which is a bit of a killer. It’s an hour (ish) on the M11 down to Woodford, then catch the tube from Woodford to central London. All told, pretty much two to two-and-a-quarter hours, door-to-door.
Parking in Woodford though is – to say the least – weird.
The car-park on Chateris Road is owned and run by Redbridge Council, and it’s pay-and-display. I use RingGo to sort out the parking, and that makes things even easier – use the iPhone App to pay using my linked credit-card, and job done. £4.80 per day to park – that’s it.
Because the weird thing about the management of this car park is that the ticket machines don’t actually work at all ’til 9am. They won’t accept money, they won’t do anything. You can’t even pay online or by phone until 9am. I tell people this at least three times a week when they’re trying to get a ticket.
It’s the weirdest and most customer-hostile method of operating that I’ve ever seen. Although, on a more cynical note, I wonder if the reasoning is that if people think the machine’s broken, and don’t pay for a ticket, maybe it makes more financial sense (to the council) when they end up with parking tickets for £30 or £60, instead of paying the proper £4.80.
Could they be trying to discourage commuter parking? A bit daft, if they give a reasonable daily rate, though.
I really don’t know what they’re trying to do – unless it’s just to confuse and irritate people on a regular basis, in which case they’re doing a bang-on job.
But, with such a scenario, if they issued a penalty ticket, it would never stand up in court. I guess they bank on people paying up and not challenging the tickets.
I can’t imagine spending 4 and a half hours a day travelling to work. Presumably the money is bloody good, which makes it worthwhile/bearable? 😉
My daily commute is about 2 hours each way. Used to be less when I got the train, but I just can’t justify paying the £1k per year extra that the train costs compared to the bus.