People need to park.

I understand that last week there was a meeting of the Sudbury Steering Group at which members of the public were asked their opinion about the re-siting of Sudbury Bus Station.

It is no secret that there are plans to move the bus station from its current position so that the area can be developed to provide better and new facilities for the town.

A favoured spot for the new station it seems may well be the Girling Street car park.  Objectively this seems a good idea.   The siting of the car park adjacent to what passes as a  'ring road' offers better access than is achieved currently, and is almost as close to the Market Hill and other facilities as the current bus station.  It is however a little further from the railway station.

The main problem I can see is that a good number of valuable car parking spaces would be lost.    I understand that Babergh officers claim that Sudbury's car parks are currently underused and that there is scope to scrap the Girling Street spaces without problem.  I suspect that there is an issue with the way that this 'oversupply' is being calculated.  Of course there are a lot of empty spaces in the car parks early in the morning and later in the afternoon on many weekdays.  However, I think that councils must cater for peak times, rather than looking at average useage over the week.  Anyone who has struggled to find a spot on a Thursday or Saturday morning will, I am sure, agree with me.

Moreover, what about the growth in need for car parking in the town due to anticipated housing development in the area?  We know that there are plans for over 1000 new homes at Chilton Woods in the medium term, not to mention significant growth in the villages.   All these new people will have cars (each home will have provision for 2!)  and while it would be nice to think that new residents will all use the bus to come into town, we all know that this is not very likely.

I understand that once again the idea of charging for car parking in Sudbury is on the cards.  Frankly I think it would be utter cheek to impose charges for a worse service than that available when parking was free.  If the motorist is to be stung let it be to pay for better parking provision,,,,,underneath the development that will be sited on Hamilton Road for example.

We do not want to create new attractions in the town and then see them fail due to problems accessing them. Planners ignore adequate parking provision at their peril!