Amanda Taylor

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Residents’ parking comes to Queen Edith’s

by admin on 23 October, 2017

Work has begun on a residents’ parking scheme. The new scheme will be known as ‘Morley’ after the primary school on Blinco Grove – and will ipso facto also share a name with Liberal MP and founder of Homerton College, Samuel Morley. It will include Blinco Grove, Marshall Road, Hartington Grove, Rathmore Road & Close and Rock Road, plus 151-219 Hills Road and Cherry Hinton Road from the Cambridge Leisure junction to no. 196.

The first stage of the installation is putting up signs near the bays explaining the restrictions –10am –7pm Monday-Friday. During these times you may only park with a permit.

The signs are a legal requirement, and need to be near the parking bays to allow the County Council to enforce the restrictions and to protect itself against challenges by motorists. There are rules about the distances between the signs and the height of the poles on which the signs are mounted.

I know that some people have been unhappy about the positioning of the poles so I caught up with the contractors this morning to have a chat. They’re very approachable and said they’d had a friendly reception from most people, and even a few cups of tea.

They work to instructions from the Council about where they put the poles, and that has to comply with national regulations – but it is sometimes possible to tweak the positioning, bearing in mind other constraints such as services under the ground. If you are unable to talk to the contractors, please drop me an email and I’ll do what I can to help.

The next stage will be painting residents’ bays, white H-markings and yellow lines, and the scheme is set to launch on 3rd November.

   4 Comments

4 Responses

  1. Matt Casey says:

    I would like to challenge the legitimacy of the vote for this scheme, as not all eligible residents were permitted to vote, just per-household. In any case, I would assume that a second vote will be cast down the line as to whether the area would like to continue with the scheme, or to revert to parking free to anyone with cause to be in the area? The technical execution of the scheme is problematic, and many are dissatisfied with the scheme as it has been delivered = I for one opposed the scheme on philosophical grounds amongst other considerations, but would suggest that the times resident-only parking would be most beneficial would be evenings and weekends. I do not recall having options to vote on, just a simple “Yes” or “No” and have heard from many disenfranchised “Yes” voters who feel misled and mis-sold.
    Given the absolute reduction in available spaces, Marshall Rd residents losing the ability to park outside their property on their side of the street regardless of permit, the detrimental impact it is having on the experience of our community outside of merely those of us who live here (e.g. those that work or regularly need to come to the area, Morley School Community et cetera), surely the efficacy of this scheme must be re-visited and I hope we’ll be afforded the chance to have a proper say unlike the previous sham vote.

    • One vote per household is the normal way of conducting this type of council consultation.
      I would only be looking for another vote if it becomes clear that that is what a majority of residents might want. I have had a variety of comments, both positive and negative.

      I plan to do a review of the scheme next year, to see how people are finding it once they’ve all got used to it – all constructive comments welcome.

  2. Mary Kasanicki says:

    Not sure whether you are following discussions on the residents parking page, but there is a large discrepancy between the width of the parking spaces in the various roads; spaces in Hartington are up to 20cm wider than those in Rock. This means that fairly standard cars overhang some parking spaces in the area but not others which parked as close to the kerb as possible, this needs to be coordinated so that people do not need to park on the pavement to stay within the grid in some streets. It is not reasonable for there to be this variability. Perhaps you could flag this to the council, and if the boxes aren’t changed, perhaps you could send round information making it clear to residents that cars such as Golfs may only park in certain streets?
    Tunas

    • I will take this up with the officers – I suspect you are correct that the narrower streets had narrower bays. It would obviously make good sense for larger vehicles to park in the wider streets.

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