Chapter 3 – Part four: A central metropolitan block

Present parking capacity

296

There are 750 parking meters in the area and about 1,340 authorised off-street parking spaces. There are also some 160 unofficial parking spaces, giving a total of 2,250. If all the official off-street spaces are used by people working in the area, and there are on average 1.5 persons per car, then no more than about 4% of the workers can come by car and park within the area. This may be compared with the figure of approximately 7% which now obtains for Central London as a whole. Shoppers, of whom we estimate there are some 115,000 on a busy day (estimated on the basis of so shoppers per day per 1,000 sq. ft. of floor space), presumably make what use they can of the 750 parking meters, but as many of these near Oxford Street seem to be taken up by ‘essential’ vehicles, the proportion of shoppers able to come to this part of the West End by car must be very small indeed. If half the meters were available for shoppers, 1.7% of them would be able to come by car, assuming 1.5 shoppers per car and a turnover of 3.5.