There was an interesting discussion yesterday on Facebook where I felt compelled to comment, and had that comment challenged. I’m all for a healthy debate, but unfortunately it ended relatively quickly, so I’ve been trying to extrapolate an outcome here, and challenge my own thinking.
The initial premise was simple, a notification in a local newspaper suggesting that a new car park in Rotherham town centre is to start charging. I’ve raised this point before, if you want to bring people to your town and get them to spend their hard-earned money, you need to incentivise that in some way, especially when the public transport around here is pitiful, and there is a major shopping mall and multiple retail parks all within a couple of miles, that all have free parking.
As it’s a bugbear of mine, I made the comment against the Facebook post that it makes my decision on where to go very easy, I choose the large shopping and entertainment mall, that’s indoors with plenty of free parking. This comment resulted in a challenge suggesting that this was false economy, and that to drive the extra distance to the mall might cost more. Of course, this is social media, so I’m paraphrasing, but here’s the exchange in full:
- Me: It’s free to park at Meadowhall, simple decision made!
- Responder: you pay for fuel to drive 3 mile up the road then , when the car park is free for customers of forge island, Rotherham mentality 🤦🏻♀️
- Me: maybe different for me in Kimberworth, closer to Meadowhall and driving an electric car…. 😁
- Responder: {post deleted but along the lines of:} so I guess your electricity’s free then.
- Me: close enough. I charge overnight at 7p per kWh. That’s between 2p and 3p per mile. So let’s say 9p from Forge island to Meadowhall. My old 2l diesel was around 20p per mile, that would have been maybe 60p if it were all the way from Rotherham to Meadowhall. How much would parking be again? Less than 60p?? If not, maths and financial sense all say go to Meadowhall…
So yes, for me personally, I live closer to the shopping mall (1.4 miles) than I do to the town centre car park (1.8 miles). It’s always going to be cheaper and more convenient for me to go to the mall, but maybe sometimes I’ll want a change, and an unwanted car park charge might be enough to say “nah, forget it”. If I lived at the other side of town though, the distance should be factored in to the calculation and the responder had a very good point, this is often forgotten or ignored – nobody wants to pay directly, fuel costs are generally factored separately to the individual journey costs. There’s also the “hassle” factor, looking for working parking meters, having the right payment app, paying the app’s service charge etc. This though could be offset against the extra travel time to get to the mall. Should the local council (the car park’s owner and people tasked with bringing trade to the town centre) take this mindset into account though? Should they be thinking “what would put people off visiting our town?”?
Either way, I thought I’d calculate the costs for me, and try to factor those costs in for other people who might not use the same type of car, or might live in the side of town that would have to pass the town centre car park. My calculations ignore the fact that most people would have to divert to go past the town centre car park, and have a more direct route to the mall, so I’m assuming the maximum distance which I’ve worked at almost exactly 3 miles. As far as fuel costs go, for me it’s negligible. I have a couple of electric cars, a smaller on that gets around 2.84 miles per kWh, and a larger one that so far is getting around 1.89 miles per kWh. I have a home charger and use that for the overwhelming majority of my charging, which I do on my Intelligent Octopus Go tariff of 7p per kWh overnight (and in green power periods), giving me 2.46p and 3.7p per mile respectively. That means an average of 3.01p per mile, so the cost of that 3 mile journey would be 9.03p (ooh, let’s not forget the return journey, making it 18.06p). You know what, I’m going to go worst-case scenario and say I’m driving the big car, making it a total of an extra 22.22p to go to the mall with unlimited free parking over the town centre car park.
Not everybody is fortunate enough to be able to drive an EV, or even charge at home though, so I want to take their journeys into account. My old Mondeo 2.0l diesel used to get me approximately 38.94 miles per gallon or 8.56 miles per litre, which is very close to the UK average of 38 miles per gallon. This works out at around 19p per mile when Diesel was in the £1.40 / £1.50 per litre range (apparently now the local average is £1.38 per litre meaning it would be around 16p per mile but I’ll again use my worst-case). That changes things slightly in that the extra 6 mile round trip would cost £1.14 on average for most people. So how does this compare against the car park charges? Well, for customers of the cinema and restaurants on the site of the car park, you can get 4 hours free. Fair enough, for those people, this will be enough, and it makes perfect financial sense to park there. If it’s a short film, you’ll have time to potentially shop in the town centre too.
I think just focussing on this one very small area above the car park though is missing the point about getting people into Rotherham itself. The 4 hours free for customers of Forge Island is not great for eateries elsewhere in the town, and doesn’t really help any other town centre businesses and entertainment venues, so I’m going to have to look at the bigger picture and consider that you might want to explore beyond the single small cinema, single pub and extra 2 food venues. For people wanting that wider choice of retail or hospitality venue, parking charges apply around the clock at £2.50 for up to two hours, £5 for four hours and £8 for twenty-four hours. Compared to always free at the mall with large cinema, food court, pubs and plethora of shops and other venues, I feel it’s just pushing people away, and giving them more reason to avoid the town centre.
I think that in general here, based on car drivers and parking fees only, we can see that local people are much more likely to use the shopping centres and retail parks than the town centre. When you take in the indoor nature of the mall, with no litter, no smoking (OK, smokers may disagree with me on this point), security patrols, a distinct lack of the sometimes threatening beggars that blight the town centre, a wide range of shops, eateries and entertainment, why would anybody want to pay to park in Rotherham town centre at all? I’d love to hear your views in the comments below. Am I wrong? Is my maths lacking? Am I missing an important draw that the mall and retail parks don’t have?
I want to be clear that I’m not against paying to park altogether. I’ll happily pay to park in a secure car park in a place I want to go. Sheffield and York city centres for example, that have attractions, lots of shops, eateries and entertainment, history, museums, life… I’ll pay extortionate sums to park in their car parks for a few hours, maybe not exactly happily, but I’ll pay. Rotherham doesn’t have anything to set itself apart from the malls and retail parks, other than the negatives which I think push people away. I don’t want to ignore the independent shops that I hear have been thriving in the town centre, if they were in the shopping mall with free parking, I’d love to check them out, but they’re not a strong enough draw to get me in to the town centre in the cold and wet, with aggressive beggars and piles of litter to wade through, especially if I have to pay for the privilege. Again, if you think differently, please, let me know!
– The Zoo Keeper
