Paul Weaver wrote:

Save it for who? Theres no reason to go into most town centres now.

Of course, many people still have need to visit
shops/banks/businesses/work places etc. which traditionally reside in
town centres. Even today, many people don't have car-based out-of-town
shopping areas nearby.


If you really want to stop the polution, noise and smells, you'd have
pedestrianised streets in the middle with NO BUSSES, and you'd have
cheap
(or free - theres a thought!) carparks nearby. Effectivly it would
become an
out-of-town shopping center, in the middle of town.

Some towns have punished buses by doing the above and are effectively
only used by people who have no car. This is normally done by building
a bus station far from the shops - the intention by the council being
to get buses 'out of the way'.

Some more enlightened towns allow buses to serve the places in the town
centre where people want to go, and have better bus use as a result,
especially where attempts to curb car use have also been employed. See
Oxford for an example of best practice.

On a similar point, why do station carparks charge you money? When I
lived
near Warrington the local station had a small (free) car park, as
well as
plenty of space 50 yards away in the shopping center car park. 20
minutes
from Birchwood and you're in the center of Manchester.

If you want to encourage people to use trains, why charge them to
park at
the stations? Why not make park and rid schemes (for commuting.
carrying a
bookshelf or a weeks shopping back on the train just isn't a nice
thing to
do) cheap, safe, reliable and easy.

I would bet that you now live in the south. The rail commuting
patterns in the north and south differ dramatically.

In the north, even in metropolitan areas, free parking is given to rail
users to try and get more people to park at stations and use the
trains. There aren't so many people doing this, so even with this
policy the car parks usually aren't full. For example, nearly all
Midland Metro stations, along with most rail stations in the West
Midlands give free parking. Obviously this can't happen where the
station is in the town centre or else non-rail users would park there
all day. Nevertheless, some areas have greatly increased their rail
usage and are now reviewing their free parking policies.

In the south, trains are far busier. There is huge pressure on the
commuter network and if free parking was offered, the car parks would
be totally overloaded. Indeed, Chiltern Railways, concerned about
severe overcrowding at Bicester North station, have introduced a
'Taxibus' service to try and cut down on parking at the station.