Travel: Parking problems

Frank Barrett
Saturday 27 November 1993 00:02 GMT
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PARKING your car at Heathrow used to be straightforward; there was short-term and long-term. But when I looked for the long-term car park last week, I found that things had changed. You now have short-term, long-term and 'Business'. Business? Business parking apparently offers 'first class' parking (whatever that is) with 'rapid transfer' to the terminals.

The real advantage is that the Business car parks now occupy the places where the long-term car parks used to be (handily placed for that 'rapid transfer'). The new long-term car park is now down by the BA hangars where the 747s are parked (ie somewhere near Hounslow): good for plane spotters, not so good if you are in a hurry. Business parking costs pounds 24 for 48 hours, while long-term parking costs pounds 14 for 48 hours (true, this is about the same price it was two years ago - but it is not nearly so convenient).

Pardon me for being a stick-in-the-mud here, but I thought things worked pretty well the way they were. Why bother to change it all? According to the BAA, which runs Heathrow, the system was given an 'in-depth review' and was found not to be delivering 'desirable levels of quality, choice or value'. I think what it means is that the old system wasn't delivering sufficient quantities of cash. Last week the BAA announced that its first-half profits had shot up by 9 per cent to pounds 237m.

Why is that when anyone (like the Government) starts talking to us about the need to improve levels of quality and choice we end up with something inferior and usually much more expensive?

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