Westminster Council - Bike Charging - The full story

yes yes I know… mix metaphor and all that - actually I was going to say tip of the iceburg then halfway through decided that I wanted to say thin end of the wedge… and it all came out wrong…

Well I am French and this is exactly what people do in France. When they’re not happy, they don’t pay and go out in the streets in thousands to protest against whatever has been proposed. If Westminster Council’s proposals go through, I quite like the idea of parking my bike without paying because, frankly, the cost of chasing me to pay the PCN will probably be higher than the revenue they would get from the PCN itself. If we all did that, then they would have to employ quite a few more people in the council to administer all the tickets and that would cost them a fortune.

I have always adopted this policy anyway. I used to have a car and parked it in Westminster every now and again without paying. I got a ticket every time, ignored it, received a couple of letters (at least 6 months later) to remind me to pay the fine otherwise they would sue me or whatever… and at the end of the day nothing ever happened… and we are talking about a few years back, and since then I have moved and sold the car. So if they decide to make me pay to park my scooter, I will not pay knowing that they will lose out anyway if they decide to chase me.

Here’s the full 30 min interview with Westminster City Council, after several people asked to hear the whole thing.

You can watch online here: http://blip.tv/file/138164

Download the file here: BlipTV File Download

To be honest, I don’t really care because I don’t live in Westminster and, although I work in the borough, I park my scooter in a private car park all day while I am at work… so the charges will not really affect me anyway, other than when I decide to take my scooter at lunch time to go shopping, which has never happened so far. I just find the scheme disgusting, especially when they say that they have to create more space for motorcycle parking although there are hundreds of usused car parking bays in the borough. The additional space is there, it’s just that they want to charge for it so that they can get some extra revenue… of course they refuse to admit this, but come on, who is stupid enough not to realise that?

I am determined not to pay for the very few times I will be parking my bike in Westminster. I will most likely get a few PCNs but the number will be so low that it will cost them more money to chase / sue me to recover the amount I owe than if I pay the PCNs…! They will give up on me for sure as they did in the past when I had a car!

is it just me, or does the fella from the council look like lex luther?

maybe this is all a scheme so he can afford some kryptonite?

Attachments

lex-luther.jpg

lol!

Even if it is the thin end of the iceberg ( ), 60p a day is nowt. Especially if you get a nice secure bay and no bashed up scoot squeezing in next to you… sorry chaps, I’d pay it.

We could be just like the French in other ways - smell of garlic and surrender in war. But we’re not.

This is simple economics. You haven’t had to pay before so the concept of paying now is “outrageous, etc.” So what are you prepared to pay? Creating a bike bay (a secure one) does cost money. Even it didn’t there’s a cost in lost car parking revenue…

EDIT - great video, I hope to see more stuff like that on LB.com. An echoey udnerground park might not be the best place to conduct the main interview but the whole thing was very professional.

yes you’re quite right :slight_smile:

But… charging wont stop that scooter sqeezing in next to you…

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Actually it should stop the squeezings and movings, as the idea is to have marked out ‘bike-sized’ bays. Extra bikes squeezed in would get penalised. I’m not so convinced of the wisdom of that, as you can get two small scooters in the space of a GWing.

Westminster get quite enough revenue from parking fines as it is, they should pay for the conversions out of that.

Surprisingly, the Paris demo on Saturday was a complete flop. Only about 100 big bikes and 4 scooters. There were more ‘Flics’ (underdog Police) than bikes.

Should a similar demo to take over car spaces by bikes be required in London somewhere, I would hope for a lot, lot, more. And not on a Saturday, and not at 10:00 (whose silly idea was that!)h, but mid-week, from 07:30 onwards…

Sod the charges or fines for the day, just prove how few car spaces are left if bikes took them all over, one by one. So give us more bike spaces, secure, free, now, thanks very much…

I would like to apologise in advance to the scooter riders, but I think that the council is looking at the wrong end of the horse in this case.

In response to the congestion charge, Londoners are getting around paying the fee by riding SCOOTERS, rather than bikes. I would be interested in seeing the number of scooter sales vs. the number of bike sales since the introduction of the congestion charge. I wrote to the MP asking if they would investigate the potential of regulating/training scooter riders to the same degree that they train bikers before letting us loose on the road.

The cost and effort of obtaining a bike license is sure to act as a deterrent to a large portion of the scooter population who appear to have little to no regard for the safety and etiquette of riding (e.g. without your front wheel in the middle of my back wheel whilst filtering…I am so sick of this that I feel like moving over to the side abruptly to claim my space).

In short, charging bikes to park is a knee-jerk reaction to a problem caused by the introduction of the congestion charge. In response, I argue that they should not penalise bikers for the lack of foresight and forward planning. Instead, they should increase the safety and riding skills of the rapidly growing scooter population, insuring that they are trained and tested to the same level as motorcycle riders.

By the way, did anyone note in the video that the politician said the decision was already made…they just need to figure out how to implement it properly. If I put in a research grant without a properly established methodology, research councils and government departments, alike, would reject it.

Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner

Well done Brooke. First person to point out to the crowd that this is a done deal. This charging WILL be coming in around July Auguist UNLESS THIS COMMUNITY PULLS ITS FINGER OUT and starts opposing this properly. Rather than just reading or writing about it on this and other biker forums.

You lot…when are you goign to organise something to oppose this or do you WANT to pay more for parking?

Eh…this is the council we’re talking about…Security will only go in in a minimum of bays to cover “theiur obligation” whereas mysteriously EVERY SINGLE BAY will be carefully monitored VERY CLOSELY for all the profit they can gain.

GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER FOLKS…unless you’re all too rich to care of course… ???

It’s a moving target at the moment AFAIK. There was a MAG questionnaire, I believe it was advertised here, less people responded (240?) than post here every day.

So the next time someone asks you to fill in a MAG or BMF (don’t do any others FFS) questionnaire, please do it. This is your space, use it, occupy it, insist on it, don’t whinge afterwards when your unspoken voice has not been heard.

And for all the readers here who are not either members of MAG or BMF, work out HTF you will make your voice heard.

I am very pee’d off with folk who whinge and don’t DO - something at least to help.

Has everyone noticed how open and polite Westminster council are being about this? ever wondered why?

Because they’re scared of the uprising! because they know what they’re doing is daylight robbery!

We’ve got to stand together on this and absolutely fight it - even if it means parking elsewhere and walking a bit.

Anywhere else in Europe and there would be riots!

If you think Westminster is the only one going to adopt this strategy then think again ALL other boroughs are waiting to see the outcome of this before implemeneting it on their own turf. If we fail at this first hurdle with Westminster then we’ve only to look forward to payment parking EVERYWHERE else within a year or so.

It costs money to paint a few lines does it? why dont we offer to do it for them. Seriously though, all they do is hire contractors to do it - we can pledge to pay for those. It should work out at about £2 a year from each and every single rider per year to paint and maintain these boxes.

We cant let them walk all over us - it’ll only go up every year anyway then what will we do? You’ve seen how congestion charging has gone up!

C’mon, lets get something done!

A bit late now Sunshine. :frowning:

Oh damn! Is there a separate, easier, test for scooters? I missed that when I took my test.

And as for it being more expensive to take a geared bike test, that’s only true if you’re talking about taking a DAS. There’s no DAS option on an automatic. In other words, you can’t walk in to a training centre one day, having never ridden before, and walk out a few days later, if you’re lucky, with a license to ride any size of bike you like. If you ask me, THAT’s dangerous.