Raising parking charges will do very little to make an impact on the congestion in Glasgow which is caused by the queues of vehicles attempting to get into the main city car-parks - St Enoch blocks back one lane into Jamaica Street obstructing seriously the capacity of the road, the Cambridge Street queue can straddle Cowcaddens Road, and as for King Street . . .
The city roads department actually condones this practice and has installed very serious hazards to the safety of two-wheeled road-users in the form of road stud castings which are at present unfilled, and guaranteed to bring down a bicycle or seriously deflect a large motorcycle when empty or present a hazard of a plastic tube erect or rolling around the carriageway when they attempt to fill the hole.
Glasgow should take a leaf from Nottingham's book - no queueing is allowed on the carriageway for city-centre car-parks, traffic is kept moving on, and in a targeted campaign drivers were offered a period of free sample bus travel, resulting in a marked swing to use of buses once the negative perceptions of those who possibly had never used a bus had been changed.
I watch with trepidation, as a bus user, the completion of a further 2000 spaces at the Buchanan Galleries - a concentration of parking which is certain to create queueing problems by focusing the traffic on one street.
With the concept of integrated transport in focus this development would never have taken such a form - as it has destroyed direct and vital pedestrian links especially between the bus and rail stations, and has no direct connections to any of them, unlike the example of Nottingham where a 24-hour well-lit route runs through Long Marsh shopping mall from the city centre to the bus and rail stations.
In Glasgow I gather we will be able to walk with our luggage through the John Lewis store - closed outside shop hours (and on Mondays) . . .
Dave Holladay,
95 West Graham Street, Glasgow.
May 6.
FRANK McAveety gives an assurance that ''best value'' testing of services at Glasgow City Council would be based on quality, and not just costs. Why is it that the council never listens to the people of the city? We have the situation of so-called road improvements in the South Side. Victoria Road and then Calder Street and Allison Street - when will it end?
Not for some time as the mandarins are quietly getting on with changes that nobody wants or needs - Kings Park Avenue, Menock Road, Carmunnock Road, Mount Florida.
Consultation is carried out as a legal requirement, but nobody at the council pays any attention to the results. New Labour is destroying the infrastructure of Glasgow, driving businesses and homeowners out of a city which can ill afford to lose them.
John J McMullen,
9 Woodholm Avenue, Glasgow.
May 6.
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