The West Swindon Forum – There’s Never Too Many Cars!!

This is a brief addition to my West Swindon Forum thoughts.

There was so much talk of problems caused by cars:

• Dangerous, obstructive parking
• Illegal parking on double-yellow lines
• Congestion, parking and safety problems at primary schools caused by too many cars dropping kids off
• Pavement Parking
• Buses needing to take different routes to avoid congestion

But the possible solutions people gave were never going to work:

• Get schools to provide more parking
• Allow schools to let vehicles into their drop-off areas inside the school
• See if local business nearby could allow people to park in their car parks at peak times (it was mentioned that a pub near a school had allowed this)
• Double yellow lines
• Ticketing and enforcement

No one – not a single person – mentioned either the fact that these problems are caused by too many cars, and that the best solution is to encourage people out of their cars and reduce the problem at source rather try and create extra capacity.

I’m particularly baffled by the problems at primary schools. There are 54 primary schools in Swindon, which covers an area of approximately 25 square miles¹ – that’s two primary schools per square mile!!²  I can’t believe that many people need to drive the short distance to their local primary school on a regular basis.

It seems, as always, that you can’t have too many cars.