Buy the flat, dump the car? Buyers of newly built properties are finding that
the car has become so unpopular with planners that they are trying to ease
it out of the city centres. Many new flats are now built without parking, in
the hope that residents will take to cycling, walking and public transport.
The result is that parking space has become even more valuable, and a
two-tier market is developing between those who have and those who have not.
In London “a parking space is the single biggest unique selling point and will
add value out of all proportion to a property”, says Ed Mead of Douglas &
Gordon. “A space costing around £25,000 close to a £500,000 house will add
more than double its value to the house.”
Flat buyers with cars are finding that older mansion blocks are the best
option because they often have underground parking. There is, Mead says, a
distinct famine of parking spaces in new developments and the few they have
are often reserved for the penthouses in order to maximise their value. “In
some cases they may even be auctioned off to the highest bidder,” he says.
Swindon's speed cameras – politics over policing | British ...
: Swindon’s speed cameras are turned off
One driver who had reportedly been driving minicabs in Swindon for 50 years (really?) was delighted – he’d been caught out only the previous week because it had been raining hard, he was talking to his passenger and he “forgot it was a 50 mph area”. But he was “only doing 57 mph”, which of course makes it all right.
At least part of the reason the decision’s been welcomed – and the reason it was made in the first place – is that it’s perceived as a kind of stealth tax, with the proceeds ending up in Whitehall rather than in the local council’s coffers. Back in July 2008 when the proposal to remove the cameras was originally taken, the councillor responsible for transport issues in Swindon, Peter Greenhalgh, described fixed speed cameras as “a blatant tax on the motorist”. This in spite of the fact that the central government then releases money to the council for road safety measures.
Many of the doubts expressed over the decision have been based on fear that many drivers will take advantage of the absence of speed cameras to throw caution to the winds. The head of the Wiltshire and Swindon roads policing unit has said that there was a reduction of more than 30 per cent in the number of people killed or seriously injured in the year to April 2008, compared with pre-speed camera levels. Which makes a mockery of Greenhalgh’s assertion, quoted in in October 2008, that “in 2007/08 70 people had been killed on the streets of Swindon and this was proof that the cameras were not working to curb motorists’ excessive speed”. A political decision based on a dodgy use of statistics rather than a road safety one, then.
It’s a rather sad comment on British society that speed cameras, and indeed surveillance cameras generally, needed in the first place. The UK is frequently quoted as having the...
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