Home Park & car parking.

I meant to mention this last week but I've been busy.

Last weeks game showed how complete chaos could become common place, if / when Argyle return to more large crowds on a more regular basis. Last Tuesday I arrived at Home Park at 6.30 pm and managed to get one of the last 20-30 odd spaces in the car park right down in the corner that used to be the exit. A friend of mine arrived five minutes later and couldn't park anywhere. So he dropped his dad outside the ground and then proceeded to drive around side streets looking for somewhere to park. He ended up at the top end of Molesworth Rd. in Stoke! God knows where fans arriving between 6.30 and 7.30 ended up?

This is before HHP is built, which of course will have it's car park for 400 cars ( from memory) but this was only a crowd of 13,500, nothing outstanding, a reasonable championship attendance. Now when HHP is built, this new car park will have to take all the vehicles that currently use HHP car park, plus all the patrons of the hotel, ice rink, cinemas and retail / restaurant units. I would imagine a reasonable size chunk of those car parking spaces will be taken up by the staff working in the HHP complex. I can see the vast majority of the new car parking spaces being taken up by the staff and current users of HHP on match days. Or they will park in the free car parks forcing others to pay instead. Which ever way you look at it, where on earth are the patrons to all the other facilities going to park? Or football fans depending on who arrives first.

Can you imagine a family coming from elsewhere in Devon or Cornwall to watch their offspring at some event in the Life Centre or Ice Centre turning around and going home again because it's impossible to park within walking distance, especially if the weather is bad?

That brings me on to the car park at the Life Centre. This season I've witnessed and been told of several confrontations between Life Centre staff and car park users who may have been Argyle fans or indeed fans from the opposing team. Staff are trying to tell football fans they are not allowed to park there. Some people have totally ignored them, some have told them where to go. I heard one irate fan tell a member of staff that "as a Plymouth tax payer, who paid for the Life Centre, he would park where the hell he liked". I haven't heard of anybody going back to their car and moving it. It's also noticeable that cars are being abandoned all over the place around the Life Centre. Some fans are also making use of the Life Centre café. How can you then tell these people they can't park in that car park? Those fans are helping the Life Centre pay for itself.

I suppose what looks like an obvious and potentially chaotic parking nightmare has been offset a little by the fact there will never be a 17,500 plus attendance at Home Park again! That's only 4000 more than turned up on Tuesday, for a 4th division match! If Argyle get back to Championship level the lack of joined up thinking by developers, planners and councillors will be only too apparent.

By the way it took three quarters of an hour to get back out of the car park.

Richard, your observations are an indictment of the clusterfuck that is HHP. However, on the plus side, it's looking more likely that it (HHP) isn't going to happen and neither is Argyle getting huge crowds again like last Tuesday night.

I can't remember what game it was last season, but the main car park was rammed, so I went to park in the life centre car park. A space was found easily as it wasn't very full at all. A steward or some life centre official told me I had to move if I was going to the game and that I couldn't park here. I said that I'm not sure where the hell I'm going to park then as the main car park was full and I'm not all that familiar with the surrounding area. He didn't really care and said I just had to go. So I got in my car and started the engine. The same guy then knocked on my back window and said oh forget it, just park here. Very odd moment, but I was grateful.

Parking has always been a problem with big crowds. In the 70s one could be in the car park for an hour after a game before you got away... there were no place markings then, just stewarded parking bumper to bumper almost. And parking around the old swimming pool was anywhere you could find a vacant blade of grass. Unless one is infirm or very old, what's wrong with parking a mile away and walking ? Many people do. Get a bit of exercise, walk through a very pleasant park.
Brent's plan would undoubtedly be an absolute car nightmare on match days with cinemas, skating, shopping etc and god knows what else.

Did'nt have a problem parking for the Exeter game but then I got there at 3pm.