Monthly Archives: January 2018

The City

Over 50,000 parking tickets were dished out in Cardiff in 2017 – but what street racked up the most fines?

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Data journalist Dan Clark has been hard at work digging into the city’s statistics. Today’s scoop: 50k parking tickets in 2017!  But which neighbourhood had the most tickets? And which streets should you NEVER park on without paying? Find out right here …

Over 50,000 parking tickets were given out in Cardiff in the first 10 months of 2017, according to a recent FOI (freedom of information) request.

The response covered the period from the 1 January up to the 27 October. With November and December still unknown, it’s likely that the end of year figure will be an increase on the 60,441 parking tickets distributed in 2016.

Roath is the most popular region within Cardiff for offences, with 8,548 in the period studied in 2017. Unsurprisingly, the city centre is also a popular area for tickets, with naughty parkers racking up 6,650 there. Cathays, Cathays Park and Butetown all took a 4,000 ticket hammering, while at the other end of the scale Ely, Morganstown and Thornhill all received just a single parking ticket to date.

Eagle eyes on Museum Avenue

Visitors need to be extra careful when parking on Museum Avenue, as eagle eyed parking inspectors gave out nearly 1,000 tickets on this street alone in 2017. King Edward VII Avenue – the road that runs parallel to Museum Avenue and crosses Alexandra Gardens – is second on the list. Heath Park main car park, Churchill Way and Tredegar Street then complete the top five.

Top 25 most popular Cardiff streets for parking tickets:

  1. Museum Avenue – 945
  2. King Edward VII Avenue – 905
  3. Heath Park Main Car Park – 825
  4. Churchill Way – 787
  5. Tredegar Street – 631
  6. Havannah Street Car Park – 587
  7. Windsor Place – 579
  8. Albany Road – 553
  9. Fitzhamon Embankment – 546
  10. Canal Parade – 512
  11. Gorsedd Gardens Road – 491
  12. Bute Crescent – 488
  13. Bute Street – 478
  14. Plantagenet Street – 467
  15. St Andrew’s Crescent – 464
  16. West Bute Street – 458
  17. Severn Road Car Park – 454
  18. Mount Stuart Square – 431
  19. City Road – 419
  20. Park Street – 412
  21. Cathedral Road – 369
  22. Diana Street – 364
  23. Park Place – 363
  24. Dumballs Road – 362
  25. Womanby Street – 353

If you were looking for a day to risk not buying a ticket, I’d suggest you don’t pick a day in the middle of the week: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the most common days for motorists picking up parking tickets. The spread across the year also shows fewer tickets are  distributed during the summer. Perhaps it’s because the nice weather encourages people to walk, rather than drive? Or maybe the parking inspectors are forced to walk more in the winter months in an effort to keep warm?

Considering that a parking ticket carries a minimum £35 fine, this is a huge source of income for the council. Even considering that some of these may have been tests, duplicates, or won’t be immediately paid, it still runs into at least a million pounds of revenue.

The following has been paid in parking ticket fines in Cardiff over the last three financial years:

  • 2014/15: £1,896,336
  • 2015/16: £1,917,687
  • 2016/17: £1,272,772

Although 50,000 tickets might have been handed out, it’s unlikely they’ll all be paid. Between April 1 2016 and March 31 2017, just over 20 per cent of all parking tickets were appealed – 12,348 out of 60,622. A high number of these appeals were successful (67 per cent), so  recipients were not ordered to pay.

It seems unusual that such a high number were successfully appealed. The council only gives two reasons for the successful appeals: “general” and “CEO error”. It’s unclear what the first category refers to, but the latter means that the civil enforcement officer made a mistake in giving out the ticket in the first place. So if you think you have been wrongfully given a parking offence, it can be worth appealing the fine.

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The Arts, Whats on

Swaps: Photographs from the David Hurn Collection

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It is easy to forget that photography, at its core, is a shared experience. Swaps, an exhibition that cultivates photographs from David Hurn’s private collection, is a reminder of the process by which twentieth-century photography developed: through sharing photographs. This exhibition, now being held at the National Museum in Cardiff, has been curated through years of David Hurn playing swapsies with a variety of photographers. The result is a collage of photographs that are simultaneously intimate and universal. The work spans roughly 60 years, ranging from politically-motivated pieces to more surrealist, modern photographs. Generally, the exhibition feels professional in its rigour and variety, but also so warmly familiar when the context of the exhibition is appreciated.

The exhibition has a feeling of familiarity to it, like someone showing you a dusty old photo album, but this familiarity is offset by the sheer quality of photographic skill on show.  The collection comprises of photographs by leading 20th and 21st century photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Sergio Larrain, Bill Brandt, Martine Franck, Bruce Davidson and Martin Parr, but there are also some more unique, less famous photographers, such as ieke Depoorter, Clementine Schneidermann, and Newsha Tavakolian.. This certainly isn’t a safe exhibition, yet that means it doesn’t suffer from contrivance – it flows naturally from photo to photo, from generation to generation, with Hurn’s passion and interest for each photo being apparent thoroughout. It’s kind of like having somebody else’s time capsule you can dip into for a little bit, except that other person happens to be a gifted photographer with really cool mates.

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A particular highlight from the exhibition includes a photograph of Henri Matisse by Hurn’s close friend Henri Cartier-Bresson, as seen on the bottom here:

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It is a reminder that Hurn, despite his modesty, is up there with the pantheons of the art world, yet you would never think it reading over his genuine and friendly descriptions of his photographs. The exhibition details the context and story behind each photograph from Hurn himself and, sometimes, these descriptions are as entertaining and thought-provoking as the photographs themselves. There’s a video installation, too, where you can hear Hurn speak about some photographs in his own voice. Overall, the exhibition is organised to give off a very homely and understated feel, yet maintain the impact of some of the photographs. There is no pretension here, just an immensely talented photographer talking about and showing images from a craft he has been embedded in for years.

The exhibition is in place until March 11th, so pop down before it finishes! There’s an event where you can see David Hurn speak with his friend and fellow photographer, Martin Parr, about the photographs and life as a photographer in general on 7 February, too. Tickets are £10 and links to the event and the Welsh museum page can be found below.

Swaps

A Conversation with Martin Parr & David Hurn

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