The recent changes down at Barga Giardino on just where you can park your car seem to be meeting a more or less positive reaction from most people. As you can see from the images it is now very easy to find a "free" parking space on Piazza Fiat where once it was clogged up with parked cars – you can now choose your position.
So what has changed? The clue is in that word "free". Free as in vacant but no longer free as in no fee. Pay parking has come to Barga. There was a small experiment on pay parking a few years ago which was not taken to a positive conclusion. This time it seems that car owners are more prepared to pay the small fee – euro1 for the first hour and 60 cents for successive following hours if they leave their car on the car park during daylight hours. So what about the folk at Bar Sport who rely on the fact that most of their trade comes from customers who can leave their cars outside the bar ?
As you can hear from the interview (in Italiano) recorded this afternoon Franco and his staff are more than pleased stating for the record that it has been a positive move as now there are many more spaces for people to leave their cars in the Piazza. They are helped a great deal by the 12 free spaces just in front of bar where people use parking discs, again for short term parking. Two weeks into the experiment – watch this space for further developments.
Click on the link below to hear Franco talking about the pay for parking