- St Ouen clamping down on use of parish hall and church parking areas.
- Parishioners were using the areas as unofficial park-and-ride points.
- Does Jersey need official park-and-ride schemes? Take part in our poll.
COMMUTERS using car parks in St Ouen’s Village as unofficial park-and-ride points will no longer be able to leave their vehicles for the whole day and get the bus to work.
Following years of problems, including cars being dumped, the car parks being used to store commercial vehicles and commuters clogging up spaces, the parish is cracking down on how the sites in front of and behind the parish hall and next to the parish church are used.
In future, they will become official car parks with restrictions, including time limits on parking.
Parking discs will also be required at both parish hall car parks and commercial vehicles over 15 feet long will be banned from all three areas.
St Ouen Constable Michael Paddock said that overuse of the parking areas had often left churchgoers and people wishing to use the parish hall facilities without space to park.
The key culprits, said Mr Paddock, are local businesses leaving vehicles in the areas, commercial vehicle drivers and commuters dropping their cars off before catching the bus to town.
‘We haven’t come to this decision lightly – there have been problems for 15 years,’ said Mr Paddock, ‘We didn’t want to be heavy-handed and have tried to deal with it, but the problems have escalated.’
After an appeal to the States from the parish, Transport Minister Eddie Noel has now signed a ministerial decision to introduce the restrictions.
Vehicles parking behind the parish hall will soon be restricted to a maximum stay of six hours between 9 am and 5 pm, seven days a week, and will be unable to return within one hour of leaving.
In front of the parish hall, a maximum stay of one hour will apply with no returns within an hour of leaving. The parking area at St Ouen’s Church will have a maximum stay of eight hours in any 24-hour period.
‘We were having events at the parish hall and people were turning up to find the car parks already three quarters full,’ said Mr Paddock.
He said that commuters wishing to park and catch the bus to town could use the car park at Grève de Lecq, from where the No 9 bus leaves.
Mr Paddock added that he was happy for shop workers at the nearby precinct to use the area behind the parish hall to park.
‘They benefit the community and the new restrictions should not affect them because their working hours are different,’ he said. ‘But if they park at the front of the parish hall they are blocking disabled access.’
The policing of the car parks will be the responsibility of the Parish of St Ouen.
THEY have been in existence for more than 20 years and are a way of life for most of the Island’s motorists. But for some people, scratching away at a paycard before you leave the car has become something of an annoyance. With advances in technology and parking prices rising, could it be time to ditch Jersey’s unique parking payment method?
- In an online poll in August 2014, we asked Islanders what they thought of the paycard system. A total of 1,157 people took part, and the poll revealed that 70 per cent (812) were in favour of replacing the system, with 30 per cent (345) wanting to keep it.
- An automated parking payment system was introduced at Sand Street car park in October 2012, and according to Transport and Technical Services, the scheme was a resounding success.
- Similar systems, whereby you pay for as long as you stay, have been in place at the Airport and at the Waterfront for more than a decade.
- In Guernsey, the vast majority of public parking is free. When a States proposal to charge the public to use a car park in St Peter Port was passed in 2014 there was public outrage, with one former politician stating that it was a breach of human rights. There were also concerns about how it would affect the footfall in St Peter Port. [/breakout]
THE JEP last year reported that drivers could use their smartphones to check parking availability in town in the future.
The Transport and Technical Services department hinted at the move, as part of their plans to entice shoppers to St Helier, while giving evidence to the Economic Affairs Scrutiny panel.
Although there were no firm plans in place, the then Transport Minister Kevin Lewis and John Rogers, the department’s chief officer, said that a parking ‘app’ was something they were considering.
Mr Rogers said that drivers could check their phones before leaving home to find out which car parks had available spaces.
However, before a parking app could be created all car parks would need to have an automatic number-plate recognition system installed – the same technology that is in use in Sand Street.
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