Park & Ride or drive?

We recently had a meeting with First West Yorkshire, the Opco that is contracted to run the Park & Ride services in York. They run five sites surrounding the city but felt communication of the service could be improved and asked us to come up with some suggestions. The meeting went well.

For me, the objectives of Park & Ride are fairly straight forward - keep traffic out of the city centres and ease congestion. Oxford is a great example of a scheme that really works - there is an incentive (P&R is cheap to use with regular services) and a deterrent (car parking prices are expensive). The operator works with the council and they seem to be on to a winner.

City of York Council seem to take a different view. They are -

1. Spending £20,000 on devices which will allow different pricing levels and credit/debit card payments in some city centre car parks

2.Introducing “half-price Tuesdays” between 10am and 3pm in October and November in all standard-stay car parks

3.Prepared to lose between £8,000 and £20,000 in parking revenue through the 'incentives'.

Surely by doing all of this, driving in to York city centre becomes more appealing, not less?