Parking on St Matthews,Leicester - a few thoughts

Parking on St. Matthews has become the major driver behind the currant degradation of the built environment here on this inner city estate surrounded on three sides by major roads. Over half of the people on this estate are under 20 and are most at risk from the resultant pollution.

On any given night there are nearly a 100 empty car park spaces available on the St Matthews ( near Bargain Booze) so why do we need more car parking?

The SMTA (St.Matthews Tenants Association) is the driving force behind this constant growth in hard surface tarmac and the chopping down of the few trees and green spaces we have on the estate. They have probably spent £400,000 in the last 3 years rolling out a vision of 'Living in a Car Park' where we are providing unregulated parking for people visiting town and our children breathe in their fumes. By the way, according to the Leicester City Council website none of these car parks have planning permission.

They claim widespread support for car-parking although only 160 people responded to a survey they carried out.

We need to immediately halt the construction of any more hard surfaces on the estate and regulate the parking spaces we have.

A simple model would be to take 'ownership' of the parking (maybe 2000 spaces) and regulate it. Residents would be offered one space and charged £50 per year. This would generate an income of £40000 per annum which could employ a person fulltime from the estate to manage the parking. A deal could be struck with a tow-away company to tow away and fine illegally parked cars. They could pay a commission on every car they take. Any extra money could be used to plant trees and bushes, provide charging points, and of course my special project the reintroduction of the hedgehog.

Over the long term a strategy of parking space reduction should be put in place as it looks like in the future personal car ownership will decline with the rise of Uber and the imminent arrival of self driving cars - and yeah it is imminent.
This could be done by having a program to remove a small number of parking spaces every year. The Council could help by giving priority to new tenants who were willing to forego car ownership.

Car parking is no good for our children. We need to act now to protect their health and to provide a richer environment for them to grow up in and not a barren polluted car park for people who are too lazy to walk two hundred yards.

So what can we do?

We will start a petition of the people who live on St Matthew's to call an immediate halt to any new car parking provision and a long term strategy to be put in place to solve the problem.

If we have 160 people sign it it will give us a 'democratic' majority which cannot be ignored.

If you are interested in signing the petition or helping our campaign please email nodenet@gmail.com.

This is a genuine grassroots campaign to generate some serious opposition to subsidizing car owners.
The money could be spent on things that would seriously improve life on this estate for everybody. Its time to put the cars around the back and in secondary positions and not out in front in the middle of our shared space.