Looking a little further afield, Antwerp has become a good model for how P&R sites can work. There have been several large, multi-storey car parks built at easily accessible locations near the city. These cost €1 for up to 24 hours parking (fees rise considerably beyond 24h to prevent them being used as airport parking or long term car dumps). Passengers are then directed on to the main public transport network for the city - there are no special services (although the Linkeroever tram line has been strengthened).
I think the age of providing dedicated bus services for P&R sites needs to come to an end because car drivers are not special passengers. Sites need to be in the places where they will attract most usage and not where they are easiest to build (as happened with the failed site at Wroughton in Swindon). P&R should be a tool as part of wider network revisions to make local transport networks more attractive to all users.
Locally to me, Bath is about to lose a fairly substantial city centre car park, but still the woeful local council cannot manage to build a P&R site for either of the main routes to the east of the city. Two of the existing P&R sites are regularly at capacity. A failed parking strategy makes long term city centre parking far too cheap. Any urban area with a significant tourist footfall like Bath should be investing in P&R to free up their urban routes for mass transit. Likewise Bristol needs two P&R sites at the north of the city - preferably the A38/M5/M4 junction and top of the M32 - the latter could easily be served by the Metrobus routes and the former could form the basis of strengthened service down the Gloucester Road. But sadly, local leadership is too busy deluding itself about the city's capacity for private transport whilst bleating on about cargo bikes and e-scooters.
Some interesting points from
@Citistar especially in respect of how you might serve towns and cities.
The comment on having them where you need them (i.e. on the main arterial routes) rather than where they can be accommodated is very true. Swindon had two sites - now mothballed but extant (I think). I passed the Wroughton one last week, and it has always struck me that it was one of the worst conceived schemes in the country, being on what is essentially a
relatively quiet road from Devizes.
Back in the day, the idea of dedicated bus services made sense.
- Dedicated vehicles in an appropriate livery would drive awareness of the facility
- Dedicated vehicles wouldn't be liable to arrive from elsewhere and have insufficient capacity for the waiting drivers and undermine the idea of them every undertaking "modal shift"
- Dedicated vehicles would be waiting (!) acting as a mobile waiting room
Over the years, the concept has waned and for a number of reasons. Firstly, local authorities have not had the money to invest in developing and maintaining sites. Nor have they had the skills or resources to promote them. Some were poorly conceived (like Swindon) but many suffered during cuts to local government funding. It's easy to put a £ figure on the cost but less easy to quantify the benefit, so some were an "easy cut" like Worcester (of which one site was sold for development). That's before you get to councils having a vested interest in getting car drivers to pay for parking in the centre of town, and the decline of high street shopping (even pre Covid) and commuting.
So what's the solution? Well IMHO...
- Having sites on major arterial roads is one bit of best practice
- Have a decent waiting area (but not some palace that's expensive to maintain)
- Harlescott P&R in Shrewsbury is the most soulless, bleak place to wait for a bus
- The buses themselves should be modern
- A high enough frequency to make it attractive
- The Salisbury ones are now half hourly and in the case of Wilton, that's after losing the dedicated route and diverting the Bulbridge route (which should probably be more frequent anyway) to serve it
- The route should be quick and have bus priority to remove/reduce the time penalty from changing mode
- The Brislington P&R uses the Bath Road in Bristol yet it often is caught in the same pinch points (West Town Lane, Bristol Hill, Arnos Vale, Printworks)
- Market the option effectively on those roads approaching the sites
- Construct the tender of a dedicated P&R bus service with some form of gainshare with the operator to drive usage
- Remove some of the town centre roadside parking (1% p.a.) and then increase charges to compensate for the loss of revenue (supply and demand)
To pick up on
@Citistar's specific complaints, it is fair to say that Bath and North East Somerset Council have wanted to have a site on the East of the city. After assessing and discounting various sites, they came to a shortlist of three. The local populace
and many other people not directly affected effectively waged a campaign and the proposals were shelved - not so much NIMBYs but BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). I wouldn't say parking in Bath is cheap; we used to get the P&R but having moved, now just get the regular bus with the £2 fare!
EDIT: to answer the question, I'd suggest that Darlington could actually benefit from a Park and Ride located at Lingfield Point that could support traffic from the East, and one somewhere around Harrowgate Hill.
Worcester would benefit but it did have two (though only one was really any use). Perdiswell was in a good location but they flogged it for a care home!
