SHE SAYS...

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32274, 17 April 1970, Page 11

SHE SAYS...

Have you noticed how many of our suburban post offices have bus stops directly outside them? For that quick call at the local post office, as a result, one usually has to park some distance away, although I think some of the newest post offices have small car parks. Perhaps the post office does not object to bus stops outside its premises, whereas suburban shop-keepers do, having found that many motorists will by-pass a shop with no parking outside in favour of one where they do not have so far to carry their purchases. Many shoppers will travel quite a long way further than is strictly necessary to patronise a shop or shopping centre where parking is freely available, or a carpark is provided. Bus services do serve the community, but short-term parking close outside a post office is also important. Most post office patrons want to stop only for a few minutes —rarely more than five, unless there is a queue—and as suburban shopping areas become busier, such parking becomes harder for someone to find when she wants to post a letter, buy a few stamps, or make a cash withdrawal It is interesting to con-

sider here the latest townplanning ideas, which suggest shopping areas should be confined to only one side of a street. The argument put forward is that this will greatly reduce the number of pedestrians crossing the street.

But a motorist driving on the opposite side of the street to the shops is unlikely to make a U-turn on a busy road, and this would not be a good thing anyway. She is almost certain to stop and walk across the road to reach the shops. Even if the shops extend back in their block, and provide a car park, she will still have to make a right turn across other traffic to reach them, park on the other side of the road and walk across, or look for another shopping centre. Already some areas have a diversity of shopping available “under one roof,” in one block with an adequate parking area, and this is the closest to ideal from everyone’s point of view. Keeping shops to one side of a street only is intended to lead to this sort of development in time, but one can understand the feelings of the shop-owners involved when they find that plans call for shops on “their” side of the road eventually to go out of existence.