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Half-century of paying at the meters
New phone scheme ends an era
WESTMINSTER will mark 50 years of parking meters on its roadsides later this year – recalling a history riddled with controversy.
Parking chiefs have given the green light for a “cashless” Pay By Phone scheme expected to come into effect in October.
A poll revealed 77 per cent of drivers were happy with the new scheme, which allows motorists to pay for their parking on their mobile.
The council’s transport chief Danny Chalkley said: “The parking meter has a long and distinguished history in the city stretching back 50 years.”
Westminster was first to introduce parking meters in August 1957.
Files unearthed at the National Archives Centre in Kew Gardens show how a furious row between doctors marred the meters’ arrival.
The Marylebone Parking Meter Scheme was introduced after doctors found themselves repeatedly “boxed-in” by drivers double-parking outside the famous medical precinct of Harley Street.
Their complaints provoked a feasibility study that led to the pilot sceheme, the files show.
But practitioners changed their tune after realising they would not be exemptk.
“We can’t afford £1 a day,” wrote Dr Pinckney from Harley Street to Transport Minister Charles Crawford.
JAL Barber, of the Wellbeck in Wimpole Street, wrote: “This is an outrage beyond belief. Doctors should not be expected to pay to save lives.”
Complaints from doctors in Harley Street and Wimpole Street and clinics had revealed a potential “danger to life”.
The matter was raised in Parliament and council chiefs were told to map out the first ‘congestion zone’ between Oxford Street, Edgware Road, George Street and Marylebone Lane.
Charges were set at £1 a day.
A public inquiry was called when more than 300 physicians came together claiming they could not afford the rates. And reams of complaints from residents followed a decision to make concessions for the disabled only.
A report from a council meeting shows how residents were given no concessions: “They [parking meters] went through with considerable difficulty after a proposal for preferential treatment for residents was resisted.”
Chelsea, Holborn and Croydon introduced the popular scheme within months.
Fifty years of rows later, the council announced plans to phase out the meter – preferring a service where drivers text their payment with an added 10 per cent surcharge.
The council hopes other local authorities will join them in adopting this “pan-London solution”. |
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