DRIVERS were today urged to get on the buses and make a Preston park-and-ride scheme work.

A month after the £4.7million Walton-le-Dale scheme opened only a fraction of the 800 car parking spaces are being used each day.

And angry residents living near the new project, opened on December 1 last year to relieve congestion around the busy A6 Victoria Road and London Way area, claim the traffic problems are as bad as before.

Michelle Stirland, of Victoria Road, said park and ride had made no difference to traffic congestion.

She said: "The traffic lights have made things a bit easier but the buses haven't done anything. There are always spaces left and the noise levels are just the same. It's just a waste of time and money."

Another resident, Cameron Grainger, also of Victoria Road, said: "There's not been much of a difference. No-one with a car bothers to use the park and ride. The whole house shakes with the traffic and things are getting dangerous."

At 9.30am on Tuesday, January 14, our photographer took these pictures of the car park near to the Capitol Centre with more than 630 spaces still free.

Councillor Nora Ward, from the Preston South East ward, cabinet member for Highways and Transport, defended the system, saying: "People should give it a try -- see how much time and money you can save. This is an excellent facility and a cheap way of getting into the city centre.

"The number of cars that use the park and ride are a number of cars less than there would be using the centre and that must be a good thing."

It is Preston's second park-and-ride system with the Portway scheme covering the city centre from Riversway.

Preston Bus operate both sites with buses running every six minutes to the town centre at peak time and every 10 minutes off-peak. The daily return fare from the Walton-le-Dale site is £1.50 per person before 9.30am and then 70p. Concessions are available.

Peter Bell, managing director for Preston Bus, said the service was doing "very well". He said around 100 trips per day attracted 800 individual journeys -- on average eight people per bus.

In addition to parking the Walton-le-Dale site also contains floodlights, toilet facilities, cycle lockers and CCTV with uniformed guards patrolling the area.

Plans were first discussed for a park and ride in 1997 when a seven-acre location was set aside.

A Government grant to Lancashire County Council followed in 1999 but the idea still took another three years to become reality after numerous setbacks.