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Amanda Taylor
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Robin Hood junction update
Slim majority for new residents’ parking scheme in Coleridge
by admin on 9 January, 2018
Coleridge West residents’ parking zone
Residents in the west Coleridge area have given their backing to a new residents’ parking scheme covering the area between Cherry Hinton Road, Mill Road and Coleridge Road.
The County Council ran a consultation there at the end of last year, as well as in the Accordia estate off Brooklands Avenue, in the Staffordshire Street area near the Grafton Centre, and Newnham.
Just over half of the Coleridge West residents who took part in the survey supported the council’s proposed scheme. The Council will be looking at all the feedback received from the surveys and the public exhibition and considering it before it creates the final plans, which will be advertised in the local paper as part of a statutory consultation.
Councillors on the Cambridge City Joint Area Committee will review all comments and objections received during the statutory consultation and they will decide on whether to implement the schemes.
The Greater Cambridge Partnership Executive Board will fund the implementation costs associated with all four new schemes, meaning participants only need to pay for residents’ permits and visitors’ permits.
Yet another kick in the teeth for commuters that live outside of Cambridge. We are forced out of using the train station car park by cripplingly high prices, they do the same with the park and ride next to Addenbrookes. Now we are being pushed out of the west Coleridge area. Why, at the weekend most of these roads have virtually no cars on them, so this is simply to punish commuters.
How about helping commuters rather than making it more and more difficult, with a cheap or (shock/horror) free park and ride that starts its buses early enough (5.15 am) so that we can use them.
How about someone doing some forward thinking. Why is the park and ride next to Addenbrookes so expensive, is it to stop people using it who work in Addenbrookes taking all of the space. If that is the case, why not make it bigger, a multi-story car park that can cope with the number of cars for example.
Steve – commuting by car needs to be discouraged if the city is to avoid coming to a standstill, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the best way to achieve this is to reduce the availability of free parking. Otherwise, the go-to method will be the inequitable and unfair ‘congestion charge’ which certain members of Ms Taylor’s political party are still banging on about.
But at the same time, we MUST make commuting cheaper and easier, a quandary which can only be solved by better and more affordable public transport, including Park and Ride. I’m not sure whether the Addenbrookes P&R you’re referring to is Babraham Road or Trumpington, but the principle is the same – we need more frequent and cheaper services from both, operating over longer hours.
Sadly, most of this is in the hands of Cambs County Council, which truly must be one of the most inept in the country. The same bright sparks which gave us P&R parking charges a few years back, despite being told by all sides that it was a ridiculous idea, are now trying to take credit for removing them again. Big deal. In the mean time, thousands of people have been driven away from the service, never to return, and the enormous expense of the charging infrastructure is money down the drain forever. Still we re-elect these idiots.
There are people pressing for intelligent ideas to be implemented, such as Smarter Cambridge Transport, although how much impact they can have is questionable when councillors are more interested in their party political games. All I can say is support the people with good ideas, press your local councillors to listen to them, and vote for those who want to do something, rather than preserve their jobs and allowances.
Hi Chris,
I agree with your analysis about Park and Ride charges. Cambridge News reports that Amanda predicted that vehicles would be displaced from the P&R to streets in Queen Edith’s and Trumpington. I think she’s exactly right; if the usage has fallen and the commuters haven’t given up their jobs, they must be parking somewhere else.
The obvious thing to have done would have been to scrap the park and ride charges and then see if the parking in Morley etc. returned to pre-charge levels.
Instead of which, a series of ill-thought out parking schemes have been introduced which have blighted the lives of residents, and have produced consequences that require more schemes to ‘solve’.
So many ‘problems’ seem to be self-inflicted.
The Cambridge News is correct. I predicted this at the meeting when the decision was taken by the Conservative Cabinet, as it was before we moved to a cross-party committee system. Their thinking was that drivers avoiding the charge would drive into town, find out how expensive it is to park in city centre car parks and trickle back to the Park and Ride sites. Of course no one needs to go that far, as they park in residential streets.
The Conservatives have at last seen sense and are now proposing to drop the charge, so we will see if commuters return. On the Morley area, parking has been difficult long before the introduction of charges (mainly sixth form students rather than commuters); residents frustrated by being able to park in the area have been campaigning for residents’ parking for over 15 years.
The first R service from Trumpington P&R to Cambridge station leaves at 5.49am and arrives at 5.58am – does this need more promotion, as it seems to present a viable option to London-bound commuters? https://tiscon-maps-stagecoachbus.s3.amazonaws.com/Timetables/East/FENSTANTON/The%20Busway%20-%207%20JAN%202018%20-%20COMPLETE.pdf
Looks good – the buses run fairly late in the evening too.
So why the heck does the P&R website say that the first bus is at 7am then? http://cambridgeparkandride.info/trumpington-times.shtml