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Doug Cooper: Roundhay man brought parking meters to Leeds
Some people might think Roundhay's Doug Cooper has a lot to answer for – he was the man who brought parking meters to Leeds.
The 77-year-old has never spoken to anyone of his career but decided to reveal his memories after reading a piece about parking meters in the YEP's Yorkshire Diary column.
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Not only did the civil engineer mastermind the installation of the meters, but he also made sure Leeds was the first place in the country to enforce parking restrictions.
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He said: "I was in the road division in Leeds and parking meters had started to rear their heads. The chief engineer was Alan Evans from Cardiff. He came in and threw a booklet on my desk and said, 'read it.'
"This was 1963 and we had to have meters up and running by April 1965." Parking meters had already appeared in London but it was in Leeds where they were first made truly effective, under the stewardship of Mr Cooper.
The first short-stay meters cost a threepenny bit for 20 minutes, or six pence for 40 minutes, whilst the long-stay meters would set you back six pence for an hour and a shilling for two.
The job required the civil engineer to walk every foot of every street which would have a parking bay.
He said: "I had to work out where every single meter bay would be. There were 1,225 in the first installation. The City of London had a guide book on how to implement and run the scheme but we soon found problems with it.
"Meter feeding was going on, where people simply put more money in to park there longer, and there was bay-hopping. When we asked Westminster what they did about these things, they said they didn't do anything." But Mr Cooper did do something about it – and he was the first in England to do so. And it didn't matter whether you were a council clerk, police chief or man of the cloth - when it came to implementing the letter of the law, all were equal.
He said: "I went back to the Act of Parliament, which empowered me to enforce parking restrictions. I devised a Driver's Offence Notice. Originally, there were about 12 offences. No one was above the law.
"I wrote all the traffic regulations for West Yorkshire from 1974-1986. And we prosecuted people.
"I've had town clerks ring me up and try to quibble, police inspectors threaten me and on one occasion, a priest who swore blind he had only been parked in his spot for five minutes, when in fact we'd been watching him for days and he always stayed too long.
"London might have had it first, but it was Leeds that made it a success. After a while, other councils were coming to us to see how we did it."
A trained civil engineer, Mr Cooper, who retired in 1986 aged 55 , lives in Leeds with wife Margaret.
He's also had a hand in some of Leeds's biggest infrastructure projects. He helped design and build the fourth runway at Leeds-Bradford Airport and he was responsible for siting much of the Leeds Inner Ring Road.
He said: "I came to Leeds in January 1962 as a surveyor, when the Leeds Inner Ring Road was being built and I was involved in that.
"Not long after, myself and two others, Gerry Taylor and Ray Brayshaw, were involved in the building of the north-east south-west runway at Yeadon Airport.
"There was literally nothing there. We were given the job of deciding where to put it. The main problem was the shape of the proposed runway, there was a hump, then a 'swilley', or dip, then an incline."
But parking meters were probably his most controversial job, and Mr Cooper is still a supporter of them.
He said "If there were no parking meters, it would be absolute chaos and people would literally fight for spaces." Yorkshire Diary salutes Mr Cooper's contribution to the city of Leeds.
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Monday 21 May 2012
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