Ant- RPZ myth: the paint makes a street look ugly

If there is one anti-RPZ story we want everyone to avoid, it is "they make the streets look ugly"

Look at this street in the Cotham RPZ on a weekday

Is it ugly? Yes, there are some white lines, but for us delivery van drivers, we see a beautiful place to park any size of vehicle -outside any of our destinations, no need to double park or even reverse in. If you look at the streetview view of its old weekday appearance you can see an ambulance having trouble negotiating it. Our van shares this problem.

Streets free of parked commuter cars look lovely to us.

Those "livable city" campaigners will be lighting up their eyes at what is a different sight to them: a street that has returned to what it was like when it was created 150+ years ago: a street without cars.

Because that is the problem: usually a road like this is full of red, black, silver, blue, yellow, green and white parked cars, often with brands like (in this part of town) BMW, Audi, VW, Volvo. As you can still see off Woodland road, just outside the KN RPZ:

You can't say "the paint makes a road look ugly" when the alternative is to fill with brightly coloured motor vehicles.

Which is why this myth must stop being repeated!

If it doesn't someone is going to see these scenes and say "we can have an empty street with no paintwork by banning cars!"

We don't want that -the anti-RPZ faction don't want that. Which is why they have to drop this claim before anyone notices!

RPZ: you aren't paying to park -you are buying the option to drive

One recurrent theme repeated by the anti-RPZ people is that you will be "paying to park".

These people are missing the point so badly that they must be cyclists -certainly they don't live in any of the current Bristol RPZ area.

The council is not forcing you to pay to park outside your house -they are saying that for £50 a year, you get the option of using your car on a weekday.

This is Cotham, the new 2013 RPZ. See the spaces?

Before, on any weekday, there would be no space. If your car was parked, it would have to stay there all day -because if you moved it before  1pm, there would be no room to put anywhere when you came back.

Which meant you could not use your car and go home again on a weekday. Parents were forced to walk their children to school, because there was no parking afterwards. It meant if you were at home during the day, you couldn't drive to the supermarket, because there would be nowhere near to unload or park. Instead residents would have to walk to the co-op by the Highbury, or down to Clifton Down. And, without a car load of food, do this two or three times a week. The main alternative: wait until peak evening and weekend hours.

Anyone who did have to drive somewhere, and then needed to come back, would end up having to park on a corner, on yellow lines, or  in front of someone else's garage.  Or just in the middle of the road:

The problem with this approach is that a couple of times a year you do end up with a parking ticket -and a single parking ticket costs a resident more than a year's RPZ permit.

The RPZ changes that: you can drive, you can park near your house, you can do the school run by car, you can shop at supermarkets on a weekday morning.

  
To say the RPZ proposal is some council anti-car policy is ridiculous. It may be anti-commuter-from-the Elf Kindom of Somerset, or the Dwarven Plains of S Gloucs, but for inner city residents who own a car it brings something you've never had: the ability to use your car on a weekday.