Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Will Chiswick Councillors help Elmwood Road residents or kick their problem into the long grass? | |
Posted by: | Dan Murphy | |
Date/Time: | 27/01/15 15:33:00 |
David "The only way to introduce [CPZ] is...street by street where conditions are so bad residents will probably support it. This may seem v unfair on nearby residents who may be affected but if you think about it, it it the only way it can be implemented...." Well, yes you are right. It does seem mighty unfair on nearby residents, especially when they are deliberately excluded from having their views / objections properly heard or addressed during the process. It is a bit one-sided. But there is another fundamental point that needs to be considered. The 2-road CPZ was supposedly implemented to address the totally spurious "massive displacement" from Chiswick House, which we now know to be totally false. But some residents in those two roads (primarily Park Road) had been complaining about parking stress in their roads for ages. At no point did anyone test these complaints by doing some proper research. This seemed odd, because in Park Road, the 126 houses have 150 off road private driveway parking spaces between them, so how come they couldn't find anywhere to park? OK, some houses at the Southern end have no driveways, but overall 91 houses (72%) have private driveways and so how come they can't park their cars? This suggests that the issue was never really about having nowhere to park their cars. it was about something else, maybe they just didn't like commuters parking in the road, or visitors to Chiswick House parking outside their homes. The acid test was always going to be "how many residents actually applied for a parking permit?". Given all the private driveways, the expectation was that not very many people would need to apply for a parking permit. And this is what happened - out of 126 houses, with something like 180-200 cars (many of the homes are 2 or 3 car families), only 88 permits were applied for in Park Road. So where do all the other park their cars? On their driveways of course, you can see it any day of the week. In Staveley it is even more ridiculous. Only 23 permits were issued in Staveley, because even more people have lots of off road driveway space. Just go and take a look. So the conclusion can only be that the majority of residents in Park & Staveley are still parking their cars where they always parked them, in their driveways, off the road. All that's happened is that nobody else is allowed to use the on road parking spaces which is why a) those two roads are virtually empty of cars now, and b) all those cars have been displaced into neighbouring roads. So your argument misses the key point, which is that those two roads did not need a CPZ in the first place. And the only reason why we now have all this stress with displacement, and neighbouring roads asking for their own CPZs, is that all the people wo used to use the (now empty) spaces in Park & Staveley are all trying to park in fewer roads. In truth, the "only way" to have done this properly in the first place would have been to carry out some proper research into how many cars were there, who they belonged to, how long they were there, and how many residents were really unable to park their cars anywhere. If Traffic Officers had done that, we would not have been arguing about this for the last three years. But they refused point blank to carry out any research at all, and simply forced it in on the basis of a deeply flawed theory of a single lead member who thought (for some reason) that he knew best. The 2-road CPZ should be taken out. It was done improperly, it was not validated by any research, and evidence now shows that it was totally unnecessary. It should be revoked, and this will solve most of the problems now being experienced by the neighbouring roads who are being forced to ask for their own CPZs. |