Support Mini Holland

I'm sure that many of those cars probably belong to people who own or work in those shops.

Possible, but depends on how the pay-and-display scheme, which should normally be biased towards short-stay parking, is administered.

Every time I ride through I'm struck by how noisy and shit it is and how badly that space has been wasted. What are all you people doing there! Hardly any of you are stopping, none of you are delivery trucks, and I sincerely doubt all of you are disabled. But those are the arguments against reducing car use that keep cropping up again and again.

True, most through motor traffic doesn't contribute anything to most town centres it passes, and only a small percentage of it will stop. But then look at the likely argument from the businesses--'we're fully aware of that, and this is why we want at least a small percentage of that traffic to stop and shop, so that it's not all a useless waste'. The argument, then, given that they see the through motor traffic levels as inevitable, reducing pay-and-display car parking provision (which in their view will be the main intervention) will attract more shoppers on foot and by bike, is difficult to make stick, because, after all, won't air pollution and noise be pretty much the same afterwards?

It has to be said in favour of Enfield that it has been making some impressive strides in developing local business and employment in recent years. How many more cycleable trips are generated by this I don't know, and given that surrounding London boroughs haven't usually followed suit very determinedly, but with any luck some effects might already be felt.

A lot are for the restaurants' customers but some are the same cars parked outside the same shops everyday.

There's no political will at the moment to change it though and the traders have an excessive influence. The last proposal put forward was to remove the bus lane southbound and change it to car parking. Fortunately that was vetoed by TFL as a bloody stupid idea.