This week Enfield Council approved plans to build flats across Cockfosters station car park. Currently it has 336 parking spaces but within five years it should have 351 flats. This means that even the northern end of the Piccadilly line can now look like everywhere else.
TfL like building flats on car parks. This is because...
a) car parks are a valuable source of developable land
b) the Mayor runs TfL and wants to build a lot more housing
c) the Mayor and TfL are essentially skint
It's easy to argue in favour because...
d) Londoners really need somewhere affordable to live
e) cars are evil pollution-belchers so readily dismissed
f) most of the car parks' current users don't live in London
g) people who drive cars ought to be using other public transport instead
The Cockfosters scheme delivers 351 homes for rent, not outright sale. 40% of these will be 'affordable', at least to some, and the other 60% as unaffordable as everywhere else is. Most will have one or two bedrooms, a handful three.
Not all of the parking spaces are going. Following consultation 47 publicly available spaces will remain, including 12 Blue Badge spaces, but essentially that's a 90% reduction. It means Cockfosters will change from being a useful bridgehead for out-of-town commuters to somewhere even local drivers wouldn't risk in case it was full.
It's not quite selling off the family silver for a one-off funding windfall because these'll be rented properties, but it is abandoning years of revenue from car parking charges and onward travel. I wondered potentially how much.
» To park at Cockfosters costs £6 a day (unless it's Sunday when it's half price). Regular parkers can get a weekly season ticket for £28.80, which if you travel five days a week is a measly £1.20 discount. Each parking space is worth a potential £39 a week and there are 336 of them which makes a total of £13,104. In real life they wouldn't be that full and some would have season ticket discounts so let's call it £10,000. That's half a million pounds a year which isn't a bad income from an empty patch of land, but Covid will have knocked it back so maybe quarter of a million pounds is a better estimate. You couldn't buy a flat for that.
» As for onward travel, that's potentially 336 passengers unable to park so no longer paying up. If they all had Z1-5 annual travelcards that'd be a yearly loss of £840,000... except they'd probably end up travelling another way and still contributing to fares revenue. A handful of car-driving Herts daytrippers deciding not to travel via Cockfosters isn't going to break the bank.
I also wondered how many car parks TfL still have, i.e. how much scope there is to keep doing this. It's a lot more than I was expecting. Here's a list, courtesy of NCP who operate them, ordered by number of parking spaces.
541 Epping
509 North Greenwich
499 Chalfont & Latimer
458 Newbury Park
447 Stanmore
419 Hounslow West
336 Cockfosters
308 Arnos Grove
290 Loughton
282 Hillingdon
273 East Finchley
269 Finchley Central
244 Rayners Lane
241 Chorleywood
206 Debden
187 Northwood
181 Chesham
173 Ickenham
173 Woodford
165 Walthamstow Central
159 High Barnet
156 Canons Park
154 Ruislip
152 Redbridge
145 Oakwood
139 Woodside Park
134 Osterley
116 Snaresbrook
106 Hatton Cross
106 Moor Park
94 North Ealing
93 Croxley
91 Totteridge & Whetstone
90 South Woodford
82 Sudbury Town
82 Wembley Park
79 Hainault
77 Harrow on the Hill
76 South Harrow
74 Queensbury
71 Morden
70 Watford
68 Hornchurch
68 Leytonstone
68 Theydon Bois
56 Hounslow East
49 Eastcote
45 Barkingside
43 Buckhurst Hill
40 Mill Hill East
36 South Ruislip
32 Fairlop
30 Highgate
27 Perivale
23 Colindale
22 Brent Cross
19 Wanstead
14 Greenford
14 Ruislip Gardens
In total that's over 9200 parking spaces (of which Cockfosters is less than 4%). Certain outlying stations are very much seen as park and rides, with Epping leading the charge for Essex, North Greenwich for southeast London and Chalfont & Latimer for Bucks.
You can see why the Mayor might look at a map of TfL assets and wonder "why are we helping out-of-towners to park when we could be housing Londoners?"
So Cockfosters isn't the only car park lined up in his sights. A Mayoral question in 2019 revealed that 15 station car parks had been identified for redevelopment, namely...
Arnos Grove, Blackhorse Road, Canons Park, Cockfosters, Colindale, Finchley Central, Harrow-on-the-Hill, High Barnet, Hounslow West, Northwood Town, Rayners Lane, Stanmore, Sudbury Town, Wembley Park and Woodside Park.
Of these Blackhorse Road's car park is already 350 flats, while the rest remain open while plans are advanced. That's 3000 parking spaces which could soon be lost to housing (or much better used for living on, depending).
And that long list above was just for the tube. Here are TfL's car parks on the Overground and Crossrail.
116 Harrow & Wealdstone
94 Theobalds Grove
79 Bushey
37 Bush Hill Park
29 Hatch End
26 Highams Park
19 Forest Hill
18 Chingford
11 Crystal Palace
11 Norwood Junction
10 Turkey Street
6 Penge West
504 Brentwood
124 Hayes and Harlington
85 Harold Wood
83 Langley
81 Gidea Park
59 Burnham
43 Taplow
15 West Drayton
I don't believe these are in danger (for which the good people of Brentwood are especially thankful), but they too could make their contribution. They also push TfL's current tally of car parking spaces over 10,000.
It's an interesting balancing act trying to maximise accessibility and housing capacity. Those who can no longer park at their favourite station tend to get very cross and those who end up living beside a transport node tend to be very grateful. But you can only build on car parks once, and who's to decide when that should be?
