If cars had wings... (From Haringey Independent)

If cars had wings...

9:00am Friday 27th June 2008

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Another day another parking fine complaint.
What is it about parking and traffic that makes it such a hot issue in the borough? Do people really have nothing else to complain about? I’m honestly sure that can’t be true.
But day after day riled-up residents contact us with their parking woes. It could be that they were given an unfair parking fine and they can’t get their money back, or they can no longer park right outside their house.
It seems to me that parking story taps into everyone’s sense of injustice; a brewing feeling that the world is out to get you and squeeze every penny out of you. That feeling is almost always accompanied by the “it wasn’t my fault” mantra.
This week's story about Elizabeth Bennett is just one side of the parking fine saga. When it comes down to it, she did park in the wrong place at the right time. Does the fact that she has a blue badge excuse that? It does when parking signs are unclear or confusing to drivers.
Her story of innocence is a common one. However the fight to put her side of the story across and receive a refund took more than a year.
The other side of this week’s saga looks at the borough’s traffic problems. On Wednesday 600 people petitioned the council to look at traffic flow around Wood Green.
When I drive through the area the situation is pretty bad. To avoid the high street, drivers use short cuts and hurtle down the quiet Harringay ladders with the satisfactory feeling that they have cheekily avoided long queues of traffic. Little do they know how many nightmares this gives the housewife or the pensioner on that street.
Parking zones are another big bone of contention and it only took me a week in the job here to realise that. Living within walking distance of a Tube station, the number of controlled parking zones annoys me but so does the attitude of commuters.
Having to park down the road and walk to your front door is no big deal, unless maybe if you’re in a wheelchair or dragging three children along behind you, but again it taps in to everyone’s sense of injustice that the harried commuter has stolen your rightful parking spot.
Perhaps if we all had parking spaces with our names on it that would solve the problem.
Mine would read “bottom feeder who gets out of bed early and doesn’t want to walk too far”. Another may say “wherever I park I’m going to complain about it.”
As the council start introducing its electric cars it should go one step further and give them wings. If cars can now be plugged in to an electric socket at the pavement, surely the ability to take to the skys could only be a few years away.
That would solve all these problems and, I’m sure, give everyone a whole raft more to complain about.

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