THE TROUBLE with people who pontificate about parking charges, is that most of them don't appear to know how town centres work.

Thus Bill Collison (BEN: November 24) quotes the high cost of long-stay parking (£10 for nine hours) without apparently realising that few if any shoppers stay for much more than three or four hours.

Tapering charges so that long stay is proportionately much more expensive than short-stay actually benefits shoppers, and is for that reason virtually universal practice the length and breadth of Britain. The other reason for doing this is that unless charging policy penalises long-stay visitors, the additional burden of traffic falls on the arterial road network into town and city centres at a time when it is already nearing saturation point, during the morning and evening peaks.

The highway network is near enough gridlock as it is. Running town centres on the basis of unrestricted car access and cheap long-stay parking cannot be made to work. It is physically impossible -- there just isn't enough space, nor do the economics of providing car parking on that basis stack up.

We are offered the Middlebrook as an alternative example. You only have to go there on a Sunday afternoon to see how near saturation the car parking arrangements are. I'm not knocking it -- it does what it was designed to do, but the only reason why it does not stitch up traffic on the local highway network is its closeness to the nearest motorway access point. You can't work Town Centres on the same principle.

Cllr Peter Johnston

Kendal Road,

Bolton.