WE wish Skipton's mayor every success as he raises again the thorny question of solving the town's traffic problems.

Over the years the issue of Skipton's car parking problem regularly crops up. For a little while the subject comes into the spotlight. We may even get an expensive traffic survey once every so often, but little has been achieved.

At a meeting of Skipton Town Council which we report on this week, the mayor and his colleagues were told that a residents parking scheme is still in the survey stages.

We suspect that this is a euphemism that is gathering dust on some in-tray somewhere.

We have yet to hear of any resident being asked his or her views but our estimation is that a residents' only parking scheme in the town's hard pressed streets would be heartily welcomed.

Residents living near the town centre are heartily sick of the six days a week influx of first commuters and then trippers cars into residential streets. Of course, few, if any, actually own the road outside their homes and thus have an automatic right to park outside their front door.

However, there are anecdotal tales of commuters queuing up at the top of streets, waiting for residents to set off to their place of work, then diving in to seize the vacant spot.

One wonders why the efforts put into the residents' only parking zones which proliferate around the tourist city of York are so hard to implement in little Skipton.

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