Forum topic: Car parking optimisation for shopping

We’ve seen much local concern as well as anger on this subject over many years, probably peaking with the forecasts of “Armageddon” and hundreds of local shops being forced to close due to the cycle lanes. Complete nonsense of course, but showing fine examples of drilling into a chosen narrative to cause division. High street shoppers arriving by car have invariably been assumed by business owners and others as being much greater in number than those arriving by other means– conversely the last borough research I saw for PG, undertaken before active travel became a sore point, had arrivals by car identical as those on foot and also identical to public transport arrivals, ie a third of total shoppers from each. And there has additionally been frequent pressure for free parking, not least at Christmas periods.
A rather informative article addresses such points, indicating: free parking is bad for the shops, far better if parking is priced so that most but not all spaces are filled; free parking at Christmas is particularly counterproductive; parking is a subsidised act, including being paid for by non-drivers, not the council money spinning activity generally assumed; and the suggestion is that shoppers arriving by car are only the 3rd or 4th most voluminous –and so I assume behind those on foot / cycle and types of public transport.
The work is not source data referenced but the author appears to have enough relevant background to give it real weight.
See www.onlondon.co.uk/nick-lester-davis-how-much-should-londoners-pay-to-park-their-cars/