Parking In Jersey — a polemic
If you live outside St. Helier, what would it take for you to consider living in town with no parking?
First published: Jersey Evening Post June 4th, 2022
I grew up in a guest house on David Place that backed onto St Mark’s Lane. We didn’t have a parking space so my dad’s car, necessary for his work as a Public Health Inspector, was parked in a garage a few hundred metres away, behind the Masonic temple.
During the summer holidays, while my Dad was at work and after Mum had served breakfast to up to 16 guests, made the beds, cleaned the rooms, shopped daily at the central market and Le Riches, she would return home with a cardboard box full of provisions wedged in my red metal square pushchair with me remonstrating from the end of my reins all the way back up Bath Street, past the monolithic behemoth of the Odeon cinema and home. On sunny days, after a quick cup of tea, we would head to the bus stop outside St Mark’s church and take the 18A to Havre des Pas for the afternoon; making sure we were home in time to put my dad’s dinner on the table at 6pm on the dot.
Once a year, we took a bus to St. Brelade and had afternoon tea at the café above Marks and Spencer.
Why am I telling you this? Because parking is personal.
Parking affects every aspect of our lives; where we shop, where we socialise, who visits us, what after school activities our children do, what weekend activities we do and how late we stay out at night.
For me, having a safe, secure, and guaranteed parking space means that I can choose to leave my car at home and use my bike, walk, or take the bus in the knowledge that I won’t get a parking ticket, or the cost of public parking won’t mount up if I am delayed. Having a safe, secure, and guaranteed parking space means that friends can easily visit me and in later years health visitors and carers can easily park too. And, I shouldn’t have to say this but, as a woman, having a safe, secure, and guaranteed parking space means feeling confident to go to an evening class in the dark dead of winter and not worrying about parking and getting home safely.
So, when one of the political parties fighting in the current election states on their manifesto, “supply [of apartments] should be increased by relaxing requirements for car parking spaces” I don’t see the spaces, I see the people whose lives will potentially become a little more difficult. I see the elderly person who nobody visits because there’s nowhere close for their equally elderly friend to park. I see a frazzled parent pushing their fractious hungry toddler home from nursery in a pram, balancing the shopping on the handles with the basket underneath rammed full to counterbalance, along a rain darkened pavement in the biting cold. I see the teenager, whose parents don’t have a car because there’s nowhere to park, who desperately wants to join a football team but even though they have the £20 a year bus pass, but with the current timetable, it’s just too complicated and time consuming to get to football practice every week.
I am suffering from cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, I believe in sustainable transport, and, like two-thirds of islanders surveyed, I want sustainable transport. Do we want it for ourselves, or do we want it for others? I know that it’s easy for me to say that I want sustainable transport as I get in my car that is parked right outside my house, drive to Sand Street carpark and walk five minutes to a meeting in town.
If I am serious about climate action, I know that things must change. 32% of our island’s carbon emissions come from road transport. However, I am nervous of a potential future government whose reflex is to make life a little more difficult, lowering parking standards rather than making the buses, taxis, electric on demand cars and cycle routes more accessible generally and specifically to those on low incomes first. And let us not forget that in-between the actively-able and those using parking designated for disabled people there is a huge group of people who are just about managing on dodgy knees and arthritic backs, thanks to their car, to get out and walk a bit and just keep on going.
My best friend from school lives in Portsmouth. She doesn’t need a car, neither do most of her friends. An average taxi journey within their equivalent of our ring road is £3.50. When I stay with her, I will sometimes take two or even three taxis a day — something I would never consider in Jersey. No Jersey taxi driver is going to lower their prices or volunteer to make less profit so what can our government do? Subsidise or nationalise the taxi service? I doubt either of those suggestions would meet public approval.
I am an avid supporter of walking, bikes, buses, and electric on demand cars but that doesn’t mean that I don’t value parking spaces too. Garages and underground parking spaces have a multitude of uses. If you have one you will know that it’s ideal for storage, for bicycles, pushchairs, and cars of course. Perhaps this is a luxury for town-dwellers and playing a part in the climate challenge means a degree of inconvenience.
Given a choice, would you live in town without parking?
Perhaps you already do and are a member of one of the 30% of households in St. Helier who do not own a car. What we do not know is for what percentage of those households this is an active choice and what percentage it is an indicator of poverty.
St. Helier resident, Andy Le Seelleur MBE recently tweeted, “A while back, at the IOD debate, the four hundred attendees were asked to raise their hand if any person present lived inside the ring-road. Not one hand went up.” Think about that for a moment, none of the decision-makers, the movers and shakers and leaders of our Island at that event want to live in town.
A percentage, yet to be finalised, of the proposed new homes on the Waterfront are planned to be ‘affordable’. Lee Henry, CEO of the Jersey Development Company, makes a compelling argument for offering apartments without parking. A parking space can add up to £75,000 (proposed to be sold on at cost) onto the price of an apartment so not having one makes a significant saving for someone trying to get on the property ladder. For an able-bodied young person with no children or an able-bodied older person living on the Waterfront, a car parking space may be superfluous to their life. An electric on-demand car may be the ideal solution for the times they wish to get out of town to the further reaches of our island.
I am uncertain that the Jersey Development Company have got the balance quite right. They are proposing that the majority (608 out of 1001) of the new flats on the Waterfront in an area to be known as “Southwest St. Helier” will not have parking. The same is true for the new Le Masurier’s development on Broad Street. Both proposed developments have a parking standard of 0.4 parking spaces per unit.
Who is going to live in the 608 apartments on the Waterfront without parking? Not anyone with a trade who needs to park their van, nor anyone who takes a work vehicle home or is on call. We are told that thousands of homes are desperately needed by people who are already living and working in Jersey, but will the Waterfront properties meet their needs and be within their budgetary reach?
I can’t help thinking that most of the prospective politicians who are suggesting we build high (part of the proposed Waterfront development is as high as Le Marais flats) and reduce parking will never have personally to suffer the consequences of their ideas. I say ‘most’ because I know of a few who are regular users of alternative transport. Most will drive home (to a country parish) and park their car outside their house or inside their electronically operated garage and then they will drive to town and park with relative ease and cost. To be fair to them, unless they live on one of the well-served bus routes, they don’t have many other options.
Knowing that 30% of current St. Helier households do not have a car, we can extrapolate that 70% of households (based on current usage) in the new Waterfront development might need a parking space. 1,001 apartments are proposed to be built; 20% of which are three-bedroomed so we can assume that these will be family homes. 40% will be two-bedroomed, of which at least some will be family homes and a further 40% will be one-bedroom flats. The proposal includes 393 private residential parking spaces. I should add that there is ample cycle parking; 2,000 spaces too. There will also be 335 public car parking spaces and 283 public motorcycle spaces.
The message is clear — if you want to live in the new Waterfront development you will need to embrace sustainable transport.
Cirsty Moseley, Head of Move More Jersey embraces the message, explaining that, “This might help people to think about considering alternative ways to travel and onto bikes, walking and into buses which will help to improve their physical and mental well-being and helping to create a fitter, healthier and happier community”.
Cirsty Moseley may have a point. If we are serious about acting on climate change and becoming a fitter and healthier community then perhaps building with aspiration for the community we want to be — active, fit, and healthy users of alternative transport — is a worthy aim.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, parking standards could potentially drop to an all-time low. Andium Homes originally put in plans for the Ann Street Brewery site for 263 affordable homes: including underground parking for 163 cars representing a parking standard of 0.6 spaces per unit. The revised plans, which on the face of it look like a wonderful development sympathetic to the historic nature of the site, only have space for 65 cars giving a parking standard of 0.25 spaces per unit.
Andium Homes justify this on the basis that, as explained by their Chief Executive, Ian Gallichan at an Environment, Housing, and Infrastructure scrutiny panel hearing on the topic of Affordable Housing — Supply and Delivery (July 28th, 2021), “If we had everybody with a permit on our estates in the St. Helier side of it parking, we would have 300 parking spaces more than we require.” Ian Gallichan continued to explain that properties previously built by Andium Homes complied with a 0.7 parking spaces per unit rule and that 0.7 has been the standard for some considerable time but with underground parking space costing up to £75,000 to build and 300 surplus spaces that represents a significant sum that could be spent on building more homes. However, unlike private apartments, their parking spaces are not allocated to specific households, so residents are able to park at any Andium Homes site.
Balancing current car ownership figures in town with Andium Homes’ figures suggesting an oversupply of parking at their other sites, I would anticipate that a more realistic figure for residents’ needs at the Ann Street Brewery site would be somewhere between 184 (0.7 spaces per unit) 65 (0.25 spaces per unit) being needed. However, that isn’t possible as the constraints of developing this historic site mean that if a parking ratio of 0.7 spaces per unit was maintained, Andium Homes would only be able to deliver 93 homes compared to the 263 proposed. The priority of Andium Homes is building homes not carparks.
When I was a member of the Planning Committee in the early 2000’s we looked to provide one parking space per bedroom. This has been reduced to 0.7 spaces per unit and now, in the absence of a parking strategy underpinning the Sustainable Transport Policy, developers are best guessing what the new standards might be.
I find the proposed figure of 0.25 spaces per unit to be deeply troubling. I am very aware and very nervous of precedent. If Andium Homes’ application for the brewery site is approved, then 0.25 spaces per unit becomes the new low standard.
I wonder if, with a bit of joined up thinking and perhaps a change in planning policy there is a solution. Less than 100 metres away from the Brewery site in Liberation Court which has some parking spaces surplus to current residents’ requirements. If Andium Homes’ buildings within a certain radius could be viewed as one site, then this could raise the parking ratio for the new development and perhaps mitigate against a new low standard becoming policy.
James Kelly, CEO of EVie, feels they can be part of the solution for St. Helier. He has a vision for the rapid expansion of ‘on-demand’ cars that can be reliably found at key points throughout the island and can be paid for by the hour.
Andium Homes have been working with the ‘EVie’, who provide electric on-demand vehicles, to expand their Car Club services on sites. These have been operating for some time at Hue Court, Liberation Court (less than 100 metres away from the Brewery site) and Plaisant Court. The Ann Street Brewery site will have seven of its parking spaces set aside as an ‘Evie Hub’, with those vehicles accessible not only by residents of the development but the wider community. Andium Homes are also encouraging residents make the switch from car ownership by offering incentives, such as subsidised ‘EVie’ use.
While I can imagine that an electric on-demand car could work for me as a single adult with grown-up children, I cannot imagine that a family will want to use an electric on-demand car to go to the beach at current prices and I’m not sure that EVie would appreciate the state of the car after a family has used it for a beach trip; especially if that family is anything like my children when they were young: footprints on the back of seats, sweet wrappers surreptitiously stuffed in the doors, wet towels in the boot and sand everywhere. Jamie Kelly had to agree with me on that point but, ever positive, suggested that perhaps some cars might be designated for ‘families’ and all that implies.
While I don’t agree with the extent of reduced parking, I think that Andium Homes, JDC and Le Masurier’s positions on parking are understandable as what they are proposing is in line with Jersey’s Sustainable Transport Policy (p.128/2019) that was agreed by the States Assembly in 2019, which states, “Parking standards should be applied flexibly and allow for the provision of lower levels of parking and the creation of high-quality places. Where an area is well served by sustainable transport modes, more restrictive, and possibly maximum standards will be optimal.” While it is true that all these developments are within walking distance of the bus station, I have a very different expectation of what “well-served” and “sustainable” looks like.
If these applications are accepted, it will represent a paradigm shift for St. Helier living. Perhaps with a significant volume of residents without cars their voices will unite to campaign for more flexible and responsive sustainable transport options combined with more community infrastructure close at hand.
Do you want to be part of the solution?
If you live out of town and use a private parking space in St. Helier, would you be prepared to pay a new tax on private non-residential parking (also known as workplace parking levy) if that money was used to improve car alternatives for all the people soon to be denied a parking space? Would you be willing to pay a little bit more for your privilege of parking in town in a private non-residential space to provide a cheap, regular, and flexible bus service, create more safe segregated cycle tracks and covered racks for the residents who don’t have parking so will have to use alternative transport?
Whether you live in or out of town, would you consider driving a small car such as the new Citroën AMI; a tiny car that takes up half of a traditional parking space; thus, offering the opportunity effectively to double parking provision.
My plea, my desperate plea to all prospective politicians is — please don’t put families in high-rise boxes. Please don’t take away parking until there are accessible and reliable alternatives in place. Please consider how we can make these new developments fit for all islanders to access, not just the fit and physically able. And please don’t allow anything to be built that you wouldn’t be prepared to live in yourself.
Finally, if you live outside St. Helier, what would it take for you to consider living in town with no parking?
