In the middle of an otherwise-boring article about parking in Bondi (and I know you'll have a view on this, TC) there's a little passage which really struck me.
The gist of it that shopkeepers at Bondi Beach had complained that parking meters at the beach suppressed foot traffic to their businesses, and hence, by implication, that if parking was free there'd be more customers. This doesn't sound implausible - fair enough.
But what the council did was to remove the parking meters to see if it had any effect on the number of people using the carpark. It turned out that when the meters weren't there, there were fewer people, and quite a significant number fewer.
Now, if you're the acting president of the Bondi and Districts Chamber of Commerce, and the owner of a shoeshop in the affected area you have two altervatives. You can either scratch you head and say "well, maybe the recent decrease in shopper numbers is due to some other factor not related to parking meters", or you can point out some methodological flaw with the experiment - I bet there's a lot of seasonality on parking numbers at Bondi, and weather-dependency (just to pluck two out of thin air) and even if there's not you should at last say that. As anyone who's ever watched "Yes, Minister" will know there are a number of very obvious ways to attack any study whose findings you don't like, and I would have thought that a non-properly-controlled trial that's run and monitored by a party with a vested interest should be a ludicrously easy target.
So exactly how did Max Siano, the shopkeeper in question, deal with this? He said:
"They can play with figures as much as they like. Meters and parking fines have been the major cause of the downturn of business at Bondi Beach." Clearly Mr Siano's not someone who's ever going to be swayed by mere evidence, or for that matter, someone who's capable of engaging in debate.
I know this is a long way from my usual stuff (food, sex, funny signs) but it really struck me. I probably need to get out more.
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1 comment:
indeed !! The problem with the parking meters was the overly zealous Council Rangers fining people for being 1 minute late back to the car! Certainly since the enormous Westfield Mall opened up at Bondi Junction business has got really quiet at Bondi Beach and Double Bay. 2 hpours feree undercover parking and a huge range of shops !! Why would you shop at the beach when the alternative is so much better.
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