Northern Rail Parking Ticket

peter_the_piper

Where TFL goes then the others will follow, its a matter of making any money they can imo. The tickets are dodgy but why would they turn down something that would give them an aura of legitimacy?

Livingthedream

peter_the_piper wrote: »

Where TFL goes then the others will follow

I hope not, but TfL Byelaws were introduce in 2000 and off the top of me head I can't remember the last Railway byelaw amendment, even if there has been any since 2000, hopefully Stigy might add some light on this one.

peter_the_piper wrote: »

its a matter of making any money they can imo. The tickets are dodgy but why would they turn down something that would give them an aura of legitimacy?

But would the Train Companies make any more money as all 'parking invoices' would go direct to the PPC, unless I suppose the Train company added this fact when negotiating private parking company franchising or insisted on getting a direct cut of any 'parking invoices' as the land owner.

walkli

Received a reply from Northern Rail, thought I'd post it on here, I particulalry like the use of 'laissez-faire'!

Dear A

Your email to our Managing Director Ian Bevan has been forwarded to me as person within Northern Rail best placed to answer the points that you raise.

Firstly, and wholeheartedly, please let me apologise to you, your husband and his fellow commuters (as I am sure you can imagine yours was not the only contact made) for the rather unwelcome ticket he received when returning to his vehicle Tuesday evening.

I also apologise if the following seems either cold or ‘jobsworth’, but I will take this opportunity to explain why we are doing what we are in your car park and many others across the North of England.

I fully accept that the interchange between a motor vehicle and the train is often the preferred mode for many of our customers, and as you say in your correspondence capacity is certainly strained, to say the least, in many of our car parks.

Where possible we are working with our partners from TfGM and Network Rail, to increase parking facilities at our stations, we have also placed a great number of secured cycle stands all over the north to help alleviate the situation in another way. This all said while car ownership continues to rise, and inner city parking declines it will always be an uphill battle to meet demand.

At all of our stations, we will be reviewing the car park marking to see if we can ‘squeeze’ more spaces into the limited footprint that is available to us.

You state in your email that it has been common practice for motorists at Gathurst to park in a rather laissez-faire manner, while this may have been true in the past it certainly doesn’t make it right. Moreover at many locations we have received complaints and adverse comments from customers who have had their vehicles damaged or blocked in as a result of careless parking. Equally access by emergency vehicles or Network Rail vehicles to the trackside can become impossible when access roads are so restricted.

Under normal conditions it would be our intention to prosecute under Bylaw 14 (2 ii) for cars failing to park in the appropriate bays. This said there are several conditions to make this tenable: Firstly, we issue warning notices, which are placed under the windshield wipers of vehicles so parked to warn of our intention to prosecute. Secondly that the relevant signage is in place.

Thirdly, it obviously makes good business sense to review the existing markings to: (a) ensure it is clear enough to be reasonably seen, and (b) to ensure that we can get the maximum number of cars safely parked.

While none of the above are necessarily legal requirements they are all certainly best practice and represent good customer service. While at Gathurst we did issue warning tickets and the signage is in place. In fact we have received anecdotal evidence from those on the station that some of the cars ticketed, had the warning notice laid on the front seats.

This being true, the marking of the bays is not as good as it should be, with large areas without markings at all, while this doesn’t mean that parking is allowed, I would concede that it does not clearly exclude it either. In addition some of the marking is rather faded, and therefore perhaps difficult to see.

I can confirm that the car park is earmarked for resurfacing shortly, and that we will take that opportunity to remark the car park to get as many spaces in as we can. We will also look at the approach road to see if parking along it (at least on one side ) is feasible. On the subject of the approach road I can confirm that it is leased to us, and therefore our responsibility to manage.

In the mean time it should go without saying that we will withdraw the parking notices, so that you can safely ignore it. We will also ask the local team to cease their actions until the necessary resurfacing work is complete.

Finally, on behalf of Ian, myself and the business in general, I reiterate my apologies. As a regular commuter your husband’s custom is of course very important to us; the issue of insufficient car parking space is real and not one that is easily solved, but we pride ourselves on the way that we handle these difficulties, and perhaps at Gathurst we failed.

Thank you for your email and I hope that my response to it helps to reassure you that we take your views seriously.

Yours sincerely

Pete Myers

Head of Service Quality

greenface

that letter seems reasonable fair and just. Well done network rail for accepting their is a problem with notice and timing. I hope they just return the cheques to all that dont appeal too.

peter_the_piper

Be aware that more spaces means smaller spaces and more likelihood of tickets for not parking within marked lines. Glad they used sense but watch out in future, they will be on their toes.

Stigy

Livingthedream wrote: »

I hope not, but TfL Byelaws were introduce in 2000 and off the top of me head I can't remember the last Railway byelaw amendment, even if there has been any since 2000, hopefully Stigy might add some light on this one.

The National Railway Byelaws were last amended in 2005. :beer:

walkli wrote:

Received a reply from Northern Rail, thought I'd post it on here, I particulalry like the use of 'laissez-faire'!

Good result then! See, complaining directly to the TOC does work wonders! :A

Livingthedream wrote:

But would the Train Companies make any more money as all 'parking invoices' would go direct to the PPC, unless I suppose the Train company added this fact when negotiating private parking company franchising or insisted on getting a direct cut of any 'parking invoices' as the land owner.

The TOC would probably negotiate a cut....:D