Pink 'Un
MR. N1 AR PLEs's Pink Zone has now been in operation long enough to assess its merits; and on balance he was justified when he claimed on Tuesday that it had proved a successful experi- ment. Certainly it is inconceivable that London can ever go back -to its bad old ways; and other towns around the country will now be compelled, whether they like the idea or not. to work out similar schemes of their own.
The criticism that has been most commonly heard is that Mr. Marples has deprived the motorist of his rights. But the notion that a private individual, by virtue of owning a car, has a right to leave it in the street—or even a right to bring it into a city centre—is surely fallacious: for the same reason that we do not concede the 'right' of owners of private aircraft to use London Airport when and how they will. Nor is it reason- able to insist :that the Gdvernment ought to have provided. off-street parking facilities before en- forcing the Pink Zone plan. It remains doubtful whether off-street parking facilities are the answer to the traffic problem. The lesson of American towns appears to be that they are not; they create traffic problems in the morning and evening, and to a less extent at the lunch hour. which cannot be solved except by a development of throughways of the kind that have made such a mess of Los Angeles. But in any case, these are long-term proposals: Mr. Marples had to act as best he could with the facilities which were available to him.
The chief fault in the plan. as the Minister him- self admits, is that motorists have got so much into the habit of regarding side-streets as parking places that they have continued to use them for that purpose; and there simply are not enough police, or towing-away vehicles, to act as a deter- rent. Why, then, does the Ministry not employ a very simple expedient which would do no harm to anybody, and require no more police, but which would almost certainly assist in the required clearance?
Experience with parking meters has shown that most motorists have a timid streak: They do not mind parking in a side-street where there is tech- nically no parking, or staying overlong in a street where there is parking fora limited time, but they hate to think that their car is standing beside a meter registering to passers-by the fact that they have broken the law. Why, then, shouldn't the police employ a striking form of 'sticker,' which could be planted on cars illegally parked in the Pink Zone? It would' be enough to say, on the 'sticker, that the owner of the car has committed an offence, and that his number has been taken. The effect of such notices would be equivalent to putting offenders in the stocks.
Of course, it can be argued that motorists are now becoming hardened; that they would ignore such a warning on the assumption that it %%mild have no real sanction behind it. But the fact that the Pink Zone has worked at all refutes this belief. For all that the 'Zone' meant, in effect, was that the Minister has publicly pinked-in an area on a map. He has not invoked any powers that were not his before: the police have not tossed away any private cars that they could not prey ously have towed away, and the owners of the lorries and vans loading and unloading. whose absence is so striking a contribution to the present London scene, could presumably have been had up in court before. for obstruct ion. The whole Pink Zone exercise, in fact. is a remarkable example of psychological warfare at its best: and the Minister must be congratulated on the speed at which he learned—and has taught- his lesson.
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