‘Lovely Rita Meter Maid ...’ Here in Big Ben land, we are “celebrating” (not sure if
that’s the right word) the 50th anniversary of parking enforce- ment. Itwas in September 1960 that the first “trafficwardens” were employed by theMetropolitan Police. Previously, in July 1958, theWestminster had installed
Britain’s first parking meters, which were enforced by city- employed parking attendants, but they could do nothing about the no-waiting yellow lines. This established a blatantly ridiculous situation where, as
amotorist, youweremore likely to get a ticket for parking at a meter than for parking in a no-parking area – very British. In 1960, legislation created traffic wardens who were
employed and deployed by the police to patrol the no-wait- ing/parking yellow lines. In a classic case of getting it wrong from the start, the police decided to pay the wardens 5%less than the established parking attendants for what was a more complex task. Eventually, the pay differentials were sorted out, and the
wardens started to take over the parking attendants’ role and absorb the borough’s staff. Eventually, only 3 out of 33 Lon- don boroughs kept their own parking attendants. OnDayOne, the 40male trafficwardens issued 434 tick-
ets. The difficulty of the task was perhaps highlighted by the first parking ticket issued, to
aDr.Creighton,who immediate- ly and successfully appealed the ticket because he had been called to a hotel to deal with a patient having a heart attack. Talk about a good start! That the trafficwarden service started as amale-only pre-
serve is hardly surprising, given the prevailing male chauvin- ism of the day. During the law’s scrutiny in the House of Lords, the Earl of Bathurst is reported to have said: “I cannot believe that one would find many women of a suitable physique, character and type who would be able and willing to carry on such a job. The adversarial aspects of the occupa- tion would be unsuitable for feminine sensibilities.” Although no less chauvinistic, LordMerrivale was per-
haps more near the mark when he commented that female sensibilities would defuse gladiatorial confrontations between wardens and male drivers, referring warmly to the meter maids employed by the city of NewYork. Fifty years on, I think it is hard to judge street parking
management as anything other than a continuing
failure.That is not to criticize the people involved, many of whom work hard at an awful job and some of whom go way above and beyond what anyonemight expect. The problemis that, inmore than 50 years, we have nev-
er convinced the Great BritishMotoring Public that parking regulation is really needed. Indeed, I don’t think thatwe really believe it ourselves. If you drop a penny in front of an average Brit, they will
chase you up the road to return it. The same person will lie and cheat to get away without paying for parking.Why? A system where we penalize less than 10% of the rule
breakers and yet penalizemillions of people a year can hardly be said to be working, so what do we do next? (Maybe that’s an issue for the next PIE, JVH.)
Peter Guest is Parking Today’s correspondent for all things British and European. He can be reached at
peterguestparking@hotmail.co.uk.
PT
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