Nottingham City Council seems to have a contradictory attitude to car parking.
On the one hand it has a comprehensive transport policy which talks about reducing car dependency, reducing traffic growth, reducing pollution and improving air quality and on the other and enforcing ever more stricter parking standards. On the other hand it builds its own new car parks and complains when its parking revenue falls because of competition. The council claimed one of the reasons it had to make staff redundant was because its parking revenue had fallen by £650,000. There's also an element of 'do what I tell you, not what I do' because the council provides a number of staff car parks adjacent to its own buildings, pays for 'essential' staff to park in the Broad Marsh Centre and leases a large number of places in the Crown Plaza car park.
I suppose I should declare and interest here and state as a non-car owing walker and bus user, I'm on the side of reducing car use, congestion and pollution and improving air quality.
The photo shows the second Victoria Centre car park on York Street. It was built in the large green ampitheatre known as The Victoria Hole, which was created when the railway lines were taken up. The area is so wide because it had to accommodate trains from both the Great Northern and Great Central railways. The car park building work was delayed for ages because the hole was home to a large slow worm (legless lizards) colony and volunteers spent months removing and re-locating them. It was such a missed opportunity building a car park here instead of leaving it as in open space. The board closing off the disused tunnel used to be painted with a Thomas the Tank engine face.
