9 September - Where did they go?
It
is so quiet around here. The absence of vehicle noise while turning back when
a parking place cannot be found is very noticeable. I am grateful to Councillor
Sally Hinkley for taking the leading role in tackling the sometimes intolerable
parking problem brought about by the Elizabeth line since 2022. It may have its
drawbacks elsewhere but my immediate neighbours are all very pleased with the
end result. It is not a perfect solution but the big danger is displacement to areas without a CPZ.
To that there is no easy answer or even any at all.
So where have the Liz line lurkers gone? According to my postman they have
descended on the Bedonwell Road area. Jammed solid. Well they were bound to go
somewhere and the 469 bus provides an easy, though somewhat infrequent link to Abbey Wood station.
Whilst my end of Coptefield Drive is free of parkers, the area that provides the
shortest walk to the station in and around Carrill Way is not. There are
fewer parkers than usual but eleven of them were displaying PCNs when I checked at 11:30 this morning.
Further away no one had been given a PCN. Commuters do not like walking further than they have to.
There were as expected plenty of free spaces on Abbey Road now that the four
hour restriction has been imposed. This takes Cabinet Member Richard Diment into Craskean depths of vindictiveness. It serves no purpose whatsoever. I had
wondered if it was a way of encouraging more visitors to the Abbey but that
theory is defeated by the fact that vindictiveness does not apply at the weekend.
I asked the Civil Enforcement Officer how the reduced hours of parking would be
monitored but while most CEOs are friendly, some most definitely are not.