CAR parking is a contentious topic in Darlington.

Whether it’s disgruntled traders complaining about too many yellow lines in the town centre, dismayed motorists angry at receiving fixed penalty notices or jaded residents who’ve abandoned their own town centre to shop elsewhere, it seems everybody has an opinion on the issue.

In order to address some of the concerns about the parking situation, Darlington Borough Council has reduced the prices for four of its car parks to 50p per hour.

And given that one of the most common car parking complaints in Darlington is that the pay and displays are too expensive, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’d be a rush to take advantage of the lower fees when they came into effect today (Wednesday, October 1).

Well, if there was a rush it had been and gone before noon.

A morning tour of the four car parks in question: Archer Street, Chestnut Street, Garden Street and East Street, revealed without exception that they were still grossly underused.

East Street, a two-storey car park with a prime town centre location, has 338 spaces on offer but when we visited, just 28 cars occupied the site.

It meant that for each car parked there were about 12 empty spaces; all the multi-storey needed was a ball of tumbleweed to complete the picture of desertion.

The other three car parks on the new reduced price system didn’t fare much better.

Garden Street, which is a couple of minutes walk from the town centre thanks to a subway connecting it to Northgate, boasted a paltry six cars for 72 spaces.

Interestingly, the privately-run car park next door was a couple of spaces off being completely full, showing that there is a demand.

The difference between the private car park was that it charged £2 for 24 hours; half of the £4 charged by the council for a day in Garden Street, even under the revised charges.

Haughton resident Sue Gilligan thinks there may be another reason for the desertion of Market Street.

She hasn’t used the car park since her car was badly damaged along one side when she last parked it there about six weeks ago and she has heard of other cars suffering the same fate on the site.

Council leader Bill Dixon said it was early days as far as assessing the success – or otherwise – of the move was concerned.

He said: "We will review it after a week and after a month.

"People park out of habit, so it will take a while to change people's minds.

"I would hope that the usage picks up as people become more aware."

A visit to Chestnut Street car park, which sits on the outskirts of the town centre near the Halfords store, showed that although motorists can park there all day for £2, it didn’t seem to have much impact on the numbers using it.

When we visited, the 109-space car park had just 23 cars parked in it.

The car park on Archer Street was the best-used of the four on the morning we visited it, but it was still half-empty with 31 cars on the 62 space site.

Motorist David Legg painted a rather grim picture of visiting Darlington town centre with a car, describing traffic wardens “circling like vultures”.

He said: “It’s about time they reduced the prices. But I don’t think it’s enough. I’ve just got no time for parking in Darlington anymore.”

And while it’s early days for the council’s revised pricing, and a one-off visit can hardly be seen as wholly conclusive; the fact remains that on Wednesday morning just 88 cars were spread over four car parks with a combined total of 581 spaces.

Maybe that’s one in the eye for those who claim they struggle to park in Darlington because clearly there are hundreds of empty spaces, or maybe, more depressingly, it’s a sign that people are simply not visiting the town with their cars anymore, no matter what the price.