Dear Madam,

Resident Parking Permits - Motorcycles.

  Thank you for taking the time to reply to me, I appreciate that people do take annual leave, so although I was getting a little frustrated at the time it was taking to respond, I do appreciate the reasons why. I am surprised to hear that the issue of motorcycles has not been raised previously, though as you say most people prefer to keep them off the road, sadly that is not currently an option for us. It is good to be informed that the councils parking policy is being changed in order to allow a second parking permit, however I would like to know if there is anything that can be done for my situation in the meantime? At the moment we are experiencing great problems in finding parking for one of the bikes. Perhaps you could arrange a second temporary exemption?

With regard to your comment on displaying the permit, I did encounter this issue when we collected our exemption, as you rightly say displaying the permit on the bike is certainly not an option, and I was informed that we should display it in our window. However there is an issue with this, in that our apartment is situated on the third floor, and there is no view of the window from the road.

The idea of a 'virtual permit' sounds intriguing to me, the use of WebDAV would probably be successful as a repository for the permit. This certainly seems to be a good solution to the problems posed, however measure would need to be included in the legal orders as to what happens in the event of a system failure (i.e. is the parking ticket invalidated?)

I hope the new scheme is not due to start too far into 2007, however I fear that even if it starts in late January, that the period between now and then is still great enough to severely disrupt our enjoyment of our new home. As I stated before, finding parking within a reasonable distance of our home is incredibly difficult as the area seems to be somewhat blanketed in parking permit zones. I hope we can reach some temporary arrangement.

There is also another issue that I would like to raise on the grounds of curiosity, given the space occupied by different vehicles, why are parking permits not charged for on a sliding scale? For example if as I have previously stated it is possible to park 3 motorcycles in the space a single car absorbs why does the permit cost the same amount? Although I am sure the parking policy does state that vehicles must not be of a commercial nature, ignoring that I could potentially park an Articulated Lorry on the parking zone for the cost of £30 a year. It seems a rather strange policy to adhere to, given the current awareness of 'value for money' that we are seeing in our society.

As I have previously stated we are a reasonably low income household, so even putting the security risks aside, we cannot afford to pay to park one of the motorcycles overnight in a Pay and Display car park, and we simply cannot afford to pay Parking tickets (which so far we have managed to avoid), so I would like to know what the councils position is in terms of what we should do when there are simply no parking spaces available in the Non-Permit zones?

It is also worth noting that most motorcyclists would prefer to lock their motorcycle to another motorcycle if reasonable practical and possible. It reduces the risk of the bike being loaded into the back of a van and driven away, it is not always possible to lock to another bike (for instance if you do not know the owner of the other bike, or there is a second bike). A second parking permit would allow me the peace of mind to know that my partners motorcycle is locked securely to mine, although I certainly wouldn't expect that there always be space for us to park next to each other.

Even if the second parking permit lead to us being able to use the Parking zone once every few days (due to the zones already being full) it would contribute immeasurably to restoring our enjoyment of our new home. 

 I believe that if the council were able to come to some temporary arrangement, or even go as far as to create a separate parking policy for motorcycles and other smaller vehicles, it would - in my mind at least - support their current position on trying to reduce the environmental harm that hydrocarbon emissions have.

In conclusion, I am very pleased that the council does appear to have some initiatives in the pipeline that I believe will benefit many of Ipswich's residents, however I would appreciate it if temporary measures could be arranged for my circumstances, whether it is a second temporary exemption or simply immunity from Parking tickets issued in Zone 3.

Obviously it is down to the Parking Services to decided what would best fit the circumstances, but there do seem to be many options available for dealing with the situation in the short-term.

Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon

Yours sincerely

[Signature]

Ben Tasker MOC