I AM writing in response to your article Pay Parking Gets Closer. Me, my partner and our two kids (aged five months and 3 years) live in Ely, close to hospital. My partner works in London so I m with kids on my own most of the time. We enjoy going to lo

I AM writing in response to your article Pay Parking Gets Closer.

Me, my partner and our two kids (aged five months and 3 years) live in Ely, close to hospital. My partner works in London so I'm with kids on my own most of the time. We enjoy going to local playgroups, we do shopping in Tesco and shops in the centre, we love going for walks around town and visit friends here.

But, here it is. We mostly take our car, which seems ridiculous, because Ely is not such a big town. The reason is simple: if I want to walk with my daughter it takes approximately 35 minutes to get to the centre. Not to mention if we wanted to go down by the river or so... I am, just like most other mums, quite busy and having two little ones doesn't make it easier. Don't get me wrong, I love walking, but if a simple journey takes two hours, where is the time for taking kids to playgrounds etc? (not mentioning the fact that after that they wouldn't really appreciate running in park).

I would love to be able to jump on the citybus and be able to get in and out without folding the buggy, carrying all the stuff and a child, going two stops and do the same. Again, imagine all the stuff when you go swimming with two kids, or to the market shopping or there is more mums unfolding and folding everywhere. I think that would rather messed the bus timetables up. So most of us rather take their cars. I just don't understand why it is called 'Cityservice'. For me, this incorporates buses which are used in eg. Cambridge or London. Buses where you can just jump in and out. Problem is there is a pole in the doorway and no middle door in the ones in Ely. Another thing -you hardly ever see these buses full (except Thursdays).

I'm sure that half of these mums would rather go on a bus than take a car if there was proper bus service. It would make more parking spaces for people coming from outside Ely. So therefore there wouldn't be any need to introduce paid parking. But even so, why not to introduce paid car parks where the money goes into buggy-friendly buses round Ely? Or just even take some of these older buses from bigger towns/cities where those could be easily replaced with new ones?

I would love to put petition together for buggy-friendly buses, just didn't have enough time yet.

MILA MYSLIKOVA

Fitzgerald Close

Ely