I saw a poster by the instant hot brown water machines in work today advertising parking spaces somewhere else in Edinburgh Park for hire for £75 / month. If you work full time, that's about £3.75 a day, or slightly more than a return city bus journey.
Given there's a not insubstantial number of employees who get free parking in our own car parks (although demand always vastly exceeds supply), it got me thinking. What would be more of an encouragement for employers to get their employees not to drive and to instead cycle to work; deducting £75 a month for a parking pass, or adding £75 credit a month to those who cycle.
From an administrative purpose, the former is obviously easier, as you just sell the permit; it would be very difficult to check out who is actually cycling in regularly. However people running a car already will possibly be more likely to suck up the cost of a parking permit.
If £75 a day is the going rate for maintaining a parking space in an edge of town office park and given 2/3 of the very valuable and expensive land our office sit on is just a car park, I wonder when the company accountants will begin to realise quite how expensive it is to subsidise employees' driving habits.
posts
