Bradford goes into 2012 perhaps with more reason for optimism than 12 months ago.

Morrisons is creating 7,000 new jobs at its supermarkets, some of them in the district.

The £24 million City Park is at last on stream and will add what J B Priestley once urged his hometown to do – construct lots of glorious fountains with coloured lights.

A total of £35 million of Government and local authority-allocated money will be going into the city centre in one form or another – business rate relief and public works, for example.

Shopping mall developer Westfield has hinted that the time may be right to start on its proposed mall too.

On a smaller scale, a Poundworld Express is in business at the foot of troubled Ivegate, a candle shop has opened in Sunbridge Road, and another branch of the restaurant chain Nando’s is preparing to open in Centenary Square.

But one of Bradford’s perennial problems, which has been going on ever since the central area was redesigned for motor traffic in the 1960s, is city-centre car parking.

At the height of a drive to be environmentally green and sustainable, the thinking was to encourage people to use public transport or persuade motorists to park-and-ride. But while the number of people using trains has gone up, in spite of hefty annual ticket price increases, the car-parking problem remains unresolved.

The latest idea to come out of City Hall is to impose on-street parking charges of up to 60p per hour right across the district at a cost of more than £400,000, to bring the likes of Keighley and Ilkley into line with Bradford.

Val Summerscales, secretary of the small traders association Bradford Chamber of Trade, said: “There’s a car parking review ongoing. It’s not due to go to the Council’s executive committee until February.

“I find it disconcerting that I have taken part in collecting and collating responses, only for some bright spark in the Council to say we should introduce on-street car parking charges. It goes against Mary Portas’s report that recommends reducing or scrapping charges as the way to go.

“I don’t know which way our Council is going; but it means they’re not listening. Forster Square retail park is doing well with free car parking in front of it. I just despair sometimes, I really do.”

In a letter to the T&A, former textile businessman John Pashley, who lives in Baildon, said that while businesses should not be subsidised, retail profitability would be enhanced and commercial parity achieved, “if the city centre had the same free parking as the more customer-friendly surrounding areas”.

“On such a basis more shoppers might even want to come into Bradford,” he added.

In spite of budget reductions, Bradford Council still has annual income totalling well over £600 million, made up of £163 million in council tax, £151 million in fees, fines and charges, £237.4 million in Government grants and an unspecified amount in commercial lettings.

It’s not as though people like Val Summerscales are urging the Council to abolish parking charges for shoppers.

She said: “Free parking would have to be restricted to two hours maximum, with fines for people over-staying. There cannot be a free-for-all.”

At the moment, free parking on Council car parks starts at 6pm – after most stores and shops have shut. While this may be an incentive for cinema fans, disruptions to the city centre during the building of City Park have coincided with a fall in visitor numbers to the National Media Museum – 527,000 last year, down from 650,000 in 2009.

Councillor Dave Green, the Council’s executive member for regeneration and the economy, not a car driver himself, says the problem is not parking, but Bradford’s shopping offer.

He said: “A recent survey found that Bradford’s car parking charges were among the cheapest in the UK. London, Manchester and Leeds have excessive parking charges in my view, but they have a lot to offer.

“People go to Meadowhall not because there’s free car-parking, but because they know they can get everything they want in one trip.

“I am not aware that our existing car parks are over-used at weekends. But as the city builds and becomes more successful, we may have to review that situation.”