PROBLEMS with parking will not come as much of a surprise to anyone used to living, working or doing business in Ilkley.

It’s probably fair to say difficulties with finding places to park - and with the fallout from people parking wherever they can squeeze their car - is probably of much greater day-to-day concern than Ilkley’s other ‘big issues’, such as the threat of excessive housing development and growing demand for school places. Finding one big answer, or even a set of related solutions, to Ilkley’s many and varied parking problems, however, is far from straightforward. There is no obvious answer, where one path is pursued, it could cause upset in a different direction. There have been both positives and negatives identified with any number of suggestions. There may be calls for parking meters in the town centre, but there has been opposition in the past. Opinion is divided on whether high parking charges deter shoppers or create space for shoppers when it would otherwise be occupied by all-day parking. The oft-criticised traffic and parking study carried out by consultant Faber Maunsell more than a decade ago ran into all kinds of snags with trying to resolve parking woes, and came up with few conclusive answers. Even a resident parking scheme it suggested ended up being abandoned because formalising parking spaces to comply with road rules would have meant a substantial loss of parking in general across the town. One thing that could make a difference in the short term - and this is not something that can be enforced by police or local authority - is drivers taking a degree of responsibility and doing their best to not cause an obstruction.

Alternative route?

IT is a fact of modern living that many of the roads we use today were designed and built a long time ago, when there was far less traffic about – indeed, some of our highways precede even the advent of the car.

But even when roads are of a more modern design, there is a limit to the type and volume of traffic they can accommodate.

And some types of vehicle are just not suitable for some types of road - as villagers in Burley-in-Wharfedale have been finding out.

Residents of Scalebor Park are angry that trucks and construction traffic are using their streets to access a building site, causing disturbance and, they say, a danger to pedestrians and children playing in the streets.

While it is, of course, vital for heavy plant to be able to reach building sites such as this, it does seem that the residents’ objections to the vehicles using their streets should have been listened to more closely by Bradford Council.

It does seem that a more suitable alternative route to the site – which is a development of houses – is available and it is not too late for council planners to take a fresh look at this in light of the residents’ complaints.