I parked my bike at my usual place on st martins lane motorcycle parking bays, they’ve always been free, got back in the eve to find the whole row of motorcycles had been ticketed !
So be careful, looks like they’ve sneakily introduced parking charges (£4 per hour) and are now ticketing bikers unaware of the change.
The scene was so ludicrous that even passers by were commenting on all the ticketed bikes, even a traffic warden turned up who looked equally baffled. no one had told him the change in the law either, at first he thought all the bikes had been wrongly tickets so he radioed in asking for a supervisor to be sent down to cancel all the tickets !
are the signs clearly visible and obvious it’s for the bike bays? If not you may be able to use that, make sure you get photos though as they might put up clear signs in the mean time.
If they are clearly marked it’s going to be a bit harder to contest I’d have thought.
As a side note do folk have to pay to park up in London bike bays these days?
(If you do they aren’t “pay and display” are they?)
Just spoke to someone at Westminster Parking Services, she said that her department were only informed of the new motorcycle parking charges on the 13th November even tho ticketing had started on the 1st November. No one seems to have been properly informed, she’s advised me to appeal so I’ll give it a go.
only in select parking bays in Westminster you have to pay now, payment has to be made via your mobile phone. There was a sign on a lampost but seeing as I use that bay for free on a regular basis you just dont expect unannounced changes.
BTW Thanks for avatar compliment. photo was taken on the south bank
they call it mobile phone parking and its stupid overpriced given the amount of space a bike takes. i’m not surprised they been quite about introducing it.
However, all these improvements do come at a cost, and the City of Westminster is seeking to introduce charging for motorcycle parking in 2007.
On-street parking in the central areas of Westminster is currently £4 per hour at standard parking bays. This equates to £40 per day payable by car drivers. The charge proposed for motorcycle bays is £1.50 per day – this is 3.75% of the amount payable by a car driver for the same period. An annual permit priced at £150 is also proposed - this decreases this percentage further.
The council is looking to use Pay by Phone technology as a mechanism for delivering motorcycle parking charges."
Now it sounds like the signs you are looking at are for car parking (as the web says £1.50 per day for bikes) - not motorcycling as all charges need to be clearly advertised.
So you have grounds for appeal -BUT get pics of the bays and the signs now in case they put the signs up!
(Sounds like you’ve already checked it out, but) are you sure this isn’t just a mistake?
They’ve recently gone over to pay-by-phone (car) parking in the area of W’minster where I work. They put little hoods on the parking meters telling you to pay by phone, and they put the phone line details nearby (on lamposts, mainly), but the bike bays are still free.
Also, the £4/hour you mention is even more than the amount that W’minster propose to charge for the new secure bike bays when they get introduced.
The new “secure” bays are in the St Martins area so this is probably what we are talking about- the “security” is so absurd as discussed in another thread I would not be surprised if bikers failed to notice the change.
Hang on! It’s not £4 per hour its a couple of quid a day…And it’s Westminster City Council’s idea not Ken’s…The signs were wrong and he’s got grounds for appeal - sneaky traffic wardens pulling a fast one that’s all!
I’m sure the sign says £4 per hour but i’ll go and double check this weekend and take photos. If indeed it does say £4/hour then yes I do have grounds for appeal on the basis that’s the charge for cars and not the charge stated on their website. Also, to clarify westminister parking services said its only selected bays in demand areas which will be charged for. I will call them a call on Monday to clarify the parking charges.
TFL have told me in correspondence that they are against charging bikes for parking but are powerless to prevent it. BTW, Westminster is even considering charging bicycles to park! No doubt they would charge pedestrians for entering the borough if they thought they could get away with it. As for the bays behind my office, which are not far from the ones being charged, there are no posts to affix detaisl of charges to. When they recently suspended bays they posted notices on posts wel loutside the bays but proceeded to ticket the bikes every day for a week. Loads of bikes used the bays each day as there was nothig nnear the bay to say they were suspended. I wrote as an interested observer to Westminster asking what the justification for this was (there was also no reason to close the bays as it was for roadworks that never happened) but am still waiting for a reply.
I suggest you write to the council, copied to your MP and the Evening Standard asking what the council had done to ensure that users of the bay were aware that it had been chosen for the new charging regime. Was any leafleting of bikes done? Any posters put up? leaflet drops to local businesses etc? As it appears even the enforcement officers were unaware of the change (don’t forget to mention that - it shows that the council made no attempt to do this properly) so there are good grounds for thinking that this change was not carried out properly and that those caught had every reason to think that what they had done for free the day before was still free.
You’re going to all hatea me for this, but frankly you got what oyu deserved. Can I just point out that LB’s staff tried to raise awarness of the impending mega-charging plans of the SCUMBAG WCC and almost NO ONE on this site ALL OF WHOM HAVE A DIRECT INTEREST in stopping this sort of thing from happening sat with your thumbs up your bum and did nothing. Nothing, NOT A THING. Lots of hot air about, why should we pay, its not fair, this sucks, but did ANY of you do anything at all? Write to your MP? Go on the protest ride out? Picket the Council? Start a campaign to stop this from happening… Did you? NO, You did NAFF all didn’t you…sat around,whinged then had a cup of tea…well frankly, HA HA HA.
Serves you all right really. Frankly your apathy is now costing you. Enjoy.
Lazy fools with too much money. you got what you deserved folks plain and simple.
Go on, suck it all up and whine about it some more then put the kettle on…that’s the English way of dealing with someone crapping on you. Moan moan moan. Are we gonna do something about it? Hell no, fancy a cuppa, sure why not we can moan some more then.
Thanks for this. its very useful and I’ll follow up your advice. I think i can get a story in the evening standard as I was volunteering for a homeless charity when ticketed so should make a good story
from bitter experience I now believe that no protests, including civil disobedience, will make any difference until we have participative democracy where the methods for participation are enshrined in law. Until then the word democracy is merely decorative.
So political diversion over lets get back to my ticket
