In defence of the hated parking charge

为停车费辩护

PARKING fines win no votes in Britain: the beating of a traffic warden in the film “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” is played for laughs. Eric Pickles, the local government secretary, speaks of the “overzealous culture of parking enforcement” afflicting the country. “I believe we need to give people the good grace to pop into a local corner shop for ten minutes to buy a newspaper or a loaf of bread without risking a £70 fine, ” he said recently.

违章停车罚款在英国不受欢迎：电影“大麻、钱和两杆古董枪”里，打翻交通管理员是为添加笑料。内阁社会和地方政府大臣诶里克-皮克里斯谈到对“停车执法的过分热心的文化”正困扰着英国。“我认为需要给予那些匆忙开到街角小店在十分钟以内买份报纸或是一条面包的人多些宽容，而不是70镑的罚单”，他近来说。

This impractical plan echoes a widespread but mistaken belief that parking rules can work even if they are lackadaisically applied. Britain’s town centres were not laid out, for the most part, with cars in mind. A system of controlled on- and off-street parking, with charges where appropriate, is often required to meet conflicting needs. Shoppers want central, short-stay provision, so those spaces must be priced to ensure frequent turnover. Workers want to park for longer, at a lower hourly cost, farther out. And unless parking rules are enforced, congestion and pollution ensue.

这个不切合实际的设想反映了一个相当普遍但是错误的观念：认为即便不严格地执行，停车法规也是起作用的。从许多方面来看，以往英国的市中心设计没有考虑汽车问题。一个控制街道和小巷停车的系统，采取在适当的地点收费，经常要求满足两难的需要。购物者要求靠近中心、短时间的停车位子，因此那些地点必须要定价以保证频繁停车。工人们希望停车时间更长，小时费用更低，位置离中心更远些。因此，除非停车法规有力执行，否则交通拥挤和污染就会随之而来。

Mr Pickles thinks that “parking fines, soaring parking charges and a lack of parking spaces” create “ghost-town” high streets. But that claim is undermined by recent research. It is hard to find “a conclusive link” between town-centre prosperity and parking provision, according to the Association of Town and City Management. Nick Lester of London Councils, which groups the capital’s borough governments, says parking is not an important part of the choice of shopping destination, though the availability of spaces matters more than their price.

皮克里斯认为“违章停车罚款、飞涨的停车费和缺少车位”造成了“空荡荡”的商业街。但是这种主张现在研究看来是站不住脚的。根据城镇管理协会的资料，很难发现城区繁荣和停车规定之间的必然联系。首都各区的议会组织——伦敦议会的尼克-莱斯特说停车不是选择购物地点的重要因素，而停车地点的方便性比停车价格重要。

Britons object to parking charges because they feel they have already paid for their road usage through taxes, says David Leibling, a transport consultant. More irritating still, they see some councils making good money from them. The Road Traffic Act of 1991 decriminalised parking offences in areas where local authorities were willing to enforce the rules themselves, and now all but 33 of England’s local governments have taken on “civil parking enforcement”. They usually contract private companies to dish out “penalty-charge notices”. Any money councils make from on-street parking—£37m ($59m) for wealthy Westminster in 2011-12—must be reinvested in transport-related activities. They cannot legally stipulate quotas for the number of fines. And by extension private firms cannot be offered incentives to issue them.

交通顾问戴维-莱布林说：英国人反对停车收费是因为他们觉得已经交了道路使用税。更使英国人恼火的是，他们看到一些议员从他们身上赚很多钱。1991年的道路交通法规定：在由地方政府愿意执行该法规的地区，要将违规停车去刑事化，现在英格兰只剩33个地区没有施行“城市停车管理”。地方政府通常将发放‘罚单’的工作交予私人公司。政府由街头停车收费得来的任何钱必须要重新投入交通相关的事业，2011-2012年度国家收入3700万镑。政府在法律上不能规定罚款的数额。而且相关的私人公司不得被激励去发放罚单。

That is reasonable. What is undoubtedly odd is the existence of two parking systems. Refuse to pay a penalty-charge notice issued by a civil-enforcement officer in, say, North Norfolk, and this misdemeanour may provoke a visit from the bailiffs. Ignore a fixed-penalty notice issued by the police in North Somerset and you could end up with a criminal record.

这样做合情合理。所奇怪的是存在两个完全正当的停车收费系统。在北诺福克，拒绝支付由城市交通执行官发的罚单这种过错可能引来执法人员的上门拜访。但忽略一张北萨默赛特警官的定额罚单会使你背负犯罪记录。

The problem of parking charges should not be overstated, though. The RAC Foundation, a motoring lobby, says that 94% of “parking acts” require no payment, and the average household spends just £47 a year on them. Drivers find it easy to stick to the rules: only a fifth of them ever get tickets, says Patrick Troy of the British Parking Association. The other 80% benefit more than they know from enforcement that keeps traffic flowing, pollution down and parking spaces changing tenants regularly.

不过，停车收费问题大可不必被过分夸大。汽车业的代言组织——英国皇家汽车俱乐部基金会说：94%的‘停车活动’不需要付费，而且每年家庭平均的停车费仅有47镑。司机发现停车法规容易遵守：英国泊车协会的帕特里克-特洛伊说，仅有五分之一的司机曾经得到过罚单。剩下的80%司机的获益远大于他们所知的由于执行处罚而使交通流量正常、污染下降和按时腾出停车位。