Princes Drive Car Park

Colwyn Bay is a slightly down at heel town with a less than inspiring shopping centre. On the plus side if you for whatever reason decide to visit for a spot of shopping you'll have no problem finding somewhere to park. Between the car park at the BayView Shopping Centre, the council car parks and on-street parking you're guaranteed to find a space within a couple of minutes walk of the town centre. The problem is that all these spaces are time limited or become expensive if you need to park for more than two or three hours. This is bad news for anyone who works in the town. The only options are to park in the residential areas outside the town centre, which I'm sure the residents find a bit annoying, or to park down on the promenade and walk back into town. However Conwy County Council, which appears obsessed with looking after the town of Llandudno at the expense of the rest of the county, are now considering introducing parking charges on the promenade. D'oh!!! If there's one aspect of parking in Colwyn Bay that really shows how flawed Conwy Council's parking policies are it's the car park on Princes Drive. If you want to park here it will set you back £1 for one hour, £2 for two hours or a crazily ridiculous charge of £4.50 for four hours!!!!!! You can park for free at the BayView Centre for up to three hours so no-one in their right mind would pay to park at Princes Drive. To make matters worse for people who work in Colwyn Bay even if you were well enough paid to pay these rip-off rates (unlikely if you work in Colwyn Bay) the council have imposed a maximum stay of four hours so you couldn't park here anyway!!!!!! That no doubt explains why when I walked past at one o'clock today there were a grand total of two cars parked there. According to the sign opposite there are 49 spaces so for some unfathomable reason Conwy Council are rationing parking spaces on a car park which has a peak time occupancy rate of less than 5%. WHY???? If the rate charged was reasonable and proportionate, say one or two quid a day this car park would be ideal for people who work in Colwyn Bay but for whatever reason Conwy Council seem to prefer having a large empty patch of tarmac and seem happy to forego any revenue that might flow from a busy car park. It's sheer madness.

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