Ilkley is in a pretty poor state if traders feel obliged to buy a car park just to stop their customers shopping elsewhere. Cutting prices is one thing but surely buying a car park is a step too far.

What will be the next step? Booking a taxi for customers so they can do their shopping without clogging up the streets. It is very sad that a businessman is driven to this expensive solution because he feels there is no alternative.

Once again it simply draws glaring attention to the chronic parking problems faced by customers, traders, business people and residents in Ilkley.

Quite simply, we are all full up with nowhere to go. The issue needs desperate attention before the town as a whole suffers serious damage - a real possibility rather than a distant nightmare.

Unfortunately there is no-one to wave a magic wand and solve the traffic woes. True, there are some moves which might ease the problem, but the decision to make the Railway Road car park pay and display was quite ridiculous.

With the best will in the word drivers will always be very reluctant to start paying for something they have previously used without charge. A once busy car park now sits empty morning after morning.

Those who used it before are now clogging up the side streets and, because they are using up the spaces, residents are struggling to park outside their own homes.

Once a town acquires a bad traffic reputation it can be very difficult to shake off. It must do little to a trader's confidence when he or she hears mutterings along the lines of: 'Don't go to Ilkley, it's a nightmare to park'.

Do we want a ghost town? Loyalty only stretches so far. Unfortunately, so do Ilkley's parking spaces.

Answers on a postcard, please....

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.