4 March (Part 1) - Totally Bonkers

For further proof that Bexley Council’s Highways Department is either incompetent or malicious (as my son put it after a visit), may I recommend a walk up New Road?

How many variations to parking restrictions are acceptable within a quarter of a mile? Is the intention to confuse or are they the product of the aforesaid incompetence?

In CPZ AW1 the incompetence led to warning signs on some roads but none on others so that drivers may be unaware that they have entered the Zone, and in other places you get CPZ Exit notices where there is no Exit and five hour Parking Permits were sold to residents living in a six hour Zone.

At the bottom of New Road, lorry parking is banned but cars apparently not. I assume that is what the first sign means. Further along you can park opposite a bus stop for nothing or pay £15 for permission to impede 30 odd buses an hour.

Then you can’t unless you are a resident.

After that there are several more resident only bays before anyone can join in for the extortionate fee. But then it gets to be more complicated. You can park for free but only for four hours and then it is no lorries again. Can cars park there all day every day? Will you take the risk?

Then it is a return to anything goes except at lunchtime before things change entirely as you pass the hidden CPZ WH sign.

Especially confusing is that one long bay is subject to both the 11 to 1 and the 8 to 6:30 restriction. I imagine that it was originally two adjacent bays but white lining does not last for ever. And why would one long bay in the middle of a wood have two different rules anyway/ Unless of course Bexley Council truly is Bonkers.