January 9, 2002

Dear Sir,

According to the shops, it looks like the Buy Bermuda idea has had some success.

It would have worked a whole lot better if there was any decent parking in town. I had to drive around in circles looking for a one-hour spot, or risk getting jammed in the two-hour places by people just sitting waiting for someone else to leave. When I finally found a two-hour spot after driving around for what seemed hours (I had to fight off vagrants who wanted to wash the car), two hours gave me nowhere near enough time to do my shopping.

What I needed was a good four or five hours looking around and getting my shopping done. As it was, I headed for one store, shopped as fast as I could, and got out of town. There was no way I was coming back into that mess.

If the Buy Bermuda programme is ever going to work somebody has to make it easy for people to park close enough to the shops, even if it costs a few dollars.

All this talk about making it nice for pedestrians on Reid Street is fine (start by getting rid of the vagrants there too) but you won't have any pedestrians if there is nowhere for them to leave their cars for a decent length of time.

And what about those all day parkers at Par-la-Ville and City Hall? If the shops want business, those spaces should be for shoppers, not for the shopkeepers to park all day. They should be the ones to park at Bulls Head. You can't expect people to carry shopping bags that distance.

BUY BERMUDA

St. George's