Council bosses want to shut down a Canterbury Park and Ride in a money-saving move branded “illogical” by commuters.

Plans have been unveiled to mothball the Sturry Road site for two years following a drastic fall in passenger numbers since the pandemic struck.

The proposal would save Canterbury City Council £360,000 in all, but has left users fearing they will have to fork out £20 a day for parking if the move is given the green light.

The plot – which is one of three Park and Rides in the district – is most frequently used by students and employees travelling into the city from the likes of Thanet and Herne Bay.

But faced with the prospect of it closing, they believe they will have no option but to pay up to five times more than the £4 they are currently being charged for a space.

Student nurse Danielle Bettigieg-Horrigan, 34, explained: “If we haven’t got this, it’s going to be more of a nightmare for people to find parking. People use it a lot.

“I use this to travel from Margate to Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) three days a week.

“This is so convenient because it’s quicker to get into Canterbury and I’m not looking at my clock thinking a meeting with my tutor will cost me extra money.”

Local authority bosses say more than £44,000 of public money is spent subsidising the Sturry Road service each month.

Papers published by the city council estimate this figure would instead stand at just under £30,000 if it decides to mothball the site.

The documents also reveal it is “by far the least well-used” of its three Park and Rides, having received fewer than 100 visitors a day on average over the last nine months.

But another Thanet commuter, who uses the service to work for a Canterbury accountancy firm, said: “It will be a pain and make my life more inconvenient.

“It will mean I’d have to go through the traffic to one of the other Park and Rides, but I can understand there’s not a lot of use of the Sturry one at the moment.

“I won’t park in the city centre because of the cost – I’d have to pay about £20 for a day.”

CCCU student Collin Arnold, 20, also says the closure could force him into paying upwards of £2 an hour for a space elsewhere – which he describes as “way too expensive” for his trips to campus.

This comes after proposals to hike rates at sites in Watling Street and Queningate to £3.50 an hour by next year moved a step closer to being given the green light last week.

Meanwhile, charges in Pound Lane, Northgate, Longport, Riverside and Whitefriars multi-storey are all set to rise by 20p in the same period.

This has prompted fears shoppers will instead opt to visit the likes of Westwood Cross in Broadstairs and Bluewater in Greenhithe, where parking is free.

Wincheap councillor Nick Eden-Green told KentOnline: “How on earth are people going to access the shops?

“The argument the council has used for a long time in putting up city centre parking charges has been on the basis people should use Park and Ride instead of driving into the city.

“But what they want to do with Sturry Road doesn’t marry up with this. It’s wholly illogical – Canterbury’s en-route to becoming a ghost town.

“If the council doesn’t believe in Park and Rides, then it has to make city centre car parks reasonably priced so people will use them, or we will hollow out the retail sector here and lose the area’s main economic driver.”

The Lib Dem also believes the proposed mothballing of the Sturry Road car park could be “the first step towards the council winding up Park and Ride totally”.

He points to comments made by council leader Ben Fitter-Harding last year, in which he branded the system “flawed” and noted it could become a thing of the past.

However, bosses insist they will review the closure of the site after 18 months.

They say the move would see them close the car park and its terminal building “until conditions are reached when it can be reopened”, while making savings on lighting and maintenance bills.

And defending the proposals, Cllr Fitter-Harding said: “It has chronically low usage.

“The subsidy by the taxpayer per user is currently around £2,000 a year. That has to stop; it’s a horrendous waste of public money for so little benefit.

“We’ve kept over 1,000 spaces in Canterbury at their current price for the next two years, a real-terms price cut, and there’s plenty of supply, so there should be no negative economic impact on the city.

“Bin collections, litter clearing, planning and enforcement are the things our council should focus on – not subsidising parking to the tune of thousands of pounds when the shift to work from home means there’s plenty of capacity in the city centre.”

Councillors are set to debate the proposals during a meeting of the local authority’s regeneration committee today (Thursday).

Another option on the table is to suspend the Park and Ride service but keep the car park open, so commuters could park for £1 and take a Stagecoach bus into the city.

Officers have recommended councillors support the mothballing of the site.

Members will decide whether to launch a six-week public consultation into the planned changes ahead of a final vote in April. A final decision on the parking fee hikes will be taken on Monday.

'Sturry Road bus lane is needed'

Park and Ride usage has halved since the start of the pandemic, council papers reveal.

Bosses believe demand will return to pre-Covid levels, having already seen numbers hit 70% of what they were prior to the outbreak in November.

Forecasts suggest this figure will remain at about 60% over the next year - but this is not expected to be sustainable.

New Dover Road and Wincheap remain the city’s most popular Park and Rides, while Sturry Road is said to have “fallen behind the other two sites over a number of years”.

Council documents explain: “One of the reasons for this is the lack of a dedicated bus lane from the site.

“This is still a key priority and when this is delivered it should provide a big incentive for motorists to switch to Park and Ride.”

Authority chiefs also expect the delivery of the Sturry relief road - which will join the A28 opposite the site - and new housing in Herne Bay and Thanet “should make it financially viable in the future”.

"It’s wholly illogical – Canterbury’s en-route to becoming a ghost town..."

Without the bus lane, though, Cllr Fitter-Harding says buses travelling along the Sturry Road “just get stuck in traffic”.

He stresses he will attempt to address this issue in the authority’s new Local Plan, which will act as its building blueprint through to 2040.

The Conservative added: “For Park and Ride to work, it has to intercept traffic as it enters the city and then give fast, reliable and convenient access into the city.

“When the current Park and Ride contract was extended a number of options were already considered, including connecting to stations. I wholeheartedly support this.

“With the current sites in their current locations and with current levels of congestion this is simply not viable; again, I will look to address that in the coming Local Plan.”

The city council gave the green light to a new seven-year contract with Stagecoach to provide Park and Ride services from the three sites in 2020.

Crime fears

Concerns have been raised that mothballing the Park and Ride site could transform it into a magnet for crime.

Two dispersal orders were issued by police near Sturry Road over the space of just three days last week, giving officers extra powers to move on anyone causing trouble.

These were enforced following a wave of anti-social behaviour that saw a gang of youths throwing cones at oncoming traffic in Vauxhall Road, and boys shouting at shop workers in The Range.

Louts were also spotted hurling eggs at cars and damaging businesses, while the area’s Park and Ride kiosk has been closed for more than 10 days due to vandalism.

Ward councillor Louise Harvey-Quirke (Con) fears the closure of the car park could result in it being targeted by criminals. “In terms of removing the lighting, this does make me nervous,” she said.

“From a security perspective, one would have thought that lighting would be vital in order for CCTV to be usable.

“Sadly, we have already experienced anti-social behaviour at this location and I am fearful of this happening again in the future.

“That being said, this could happen with or without the Park and Ride being operational.

“The important thing to remember at this point, is that the proposed option is to put the mothballing out to public consultation. Once the consultation is complete, we will have clearer ideas on how to proceed.”