Parking turns out to be a historic problem
Parking is a hot topic in the Oban area, and has been for some weeks now since the introduction of a new system of charging.
But it is not an entirely new source of controversy.
Andrew McIntyre, from Backwoodsman Engineering Ltd at Barcaldine, last week sent a cutting to The Oban Times from an edition of the newspaper dated September 4, 1980.
Andrew said: ‘Just found this in our archives. It would seem that parking “chaos” has worried the council for nearly 40 years. For people younger than me, it will be interesting to see what measures will be taken over the next 40 years to resolve this.’
The story from 1980 says: ‘Conflicting views of Oban’s parking problems caused feelings to run high at Monday night’s meeting of the town’s community council.
A regional councillor said that the public must be educated on the subject of parking regulations or else the town would grind to a halt but a district councillor voiced his concern that Oban’s economy would be severely damaged by a “witchhunt”, such as that being advocated by some members of the council.
‘Attending Monday’s meeting was Superintendent Robert MacBrayne, of Strathclyde Police, who said that the problem affecting Oban was two-fold – the sheer weight of traffic coming into the town plus the lack of enforcement.’
It seems little has changed in nigh on 40 years.