Parking is still the key town issue

Worthing's Chapel Road has remained more or less the same in the few decades that I've known it.

Now, however, the New Time Bandits have got to work with a vengeance to create a different scenario.

The south end of Chapel Road has been closed to traffic for the next four or five weeks, but pedestrians are already seeing evidence of the wider pavements (with tree pits) which will give them more freedom akin that already enjoyed in the Warwick Street and Montague Street precincts.

Work on the northern section of Chapel Road will take place a little later.

One thing is certain, the result will certainly show that something significant has changed '” unlike the recently-completed works in Marine Parade outside the Pavilion Theatre.

When all the cones and barriers had been removed, I wondered whether the effort and traffic disruption had been worth it.

The area hardly looked any different.

I learned later that new drainage and re-surfacing were a major part of the scheme, so there was some excuse.

Although 20mph speed limits have been flagged up as great benefits of the 785,000 scheme, traffic isn't able to move much faster than this at present, so there won't be much of a change there, then.

Desirable though this new, pedestrian-friendly area might appear, there remains the sore point of people's ability to gain affordable access to it.

What's the problem? It's the parking, stupid!

This week, I received a letter from someone who was devastated at having had to pay 2.90 to park his car off-street while he picked up a bulky purchase from the Argos shop in Chapel Road.

He repeated the familiar arguments against NCP prices driving shoppers away from Worthing.

Then there was the letter published in the Herald recently, from a Chapel Road charity shop which was running out of goods to sell because people daren't stop outside the premises long enough to drop off the goods, because an NCP Services traffic warden was liable to pounce.

Both issues are, we hope, being addressed by the county and borough councils.

Parking charges and on-street parking enforcement have become high-profile causes for complaint only since their management and enforcement have been handed over to private enterprise.

I don't recall such an upsurge of public feeling when Montague Street and Warwick Street were pedestrianised; there are plenty of stores and charity shops in these particular thoroughfares.

Let's welcome improvement plans for Worthing's town centre.

Let's hope that they will make it easier to attract new business and new ideas to the area under the Masterplan vision.

But they must go hand in hand with making in-town parking an attractive proposition again.

Otherwise, people will feel that a right Horlicks has been made of Worthing's drive to the future.

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