More on Guy Street Parking

The latest round of proposals to fix the parking issues in Warwick was put before the Warwick Area Committee on the 22nd Jan. I was able to speak at the meeting in support of residents in the Guy Street area. The latest plan will create a one way system with cars entering along Broad Street and Guys Street, meeting in the middle of Guys Cliffe Terrace and then trying to get out along Cherry Street. At the same time the cycle path will head into the stream of traffic. I just hope this is not a recipe for an accident blackspot. This plan fails to meet the full 60 spaces needed by residents in the area.

Proposals favoured by residents to narrow the pavement in Guys Cliffe Terrace (where there are no houses on the north side) were rejected by the council. Residents now face the upheaval of the new one way system and a continued protest when it fails to provide all the spaces needed.

Council Needs to show more imagination with Warwick Parking Problems.

I attended a public meeting at Coten End school in Warwick last night, to discuss some of the residents parking issues in the Guy Street, Cherry Street area.

Now the problem is that with the introduction of the new parking scheme there are simply not enough parking spaces for all the people living in these streets.

People living in the area disagree and last night put forward some imaginative ideas that would help address the problem, real community politics stuff, people reaching agreement amongst themselves as to how they want their streets to work.

Unfortunately the council showed less imagination and residents were met with a whole host of reasons why things could not be done, which seemed to be more down to cost and bureaucracy than anything else.

Here are two of the suggestions made at the meeting.

Residents are strongly in favour of reducing the pavement on north side of Guys Cliffe Terrace where there are no houses and is little used. This could allow the introduction of echelon parking, going a long way to resolving the problem by creating a lot of spaces and making more use of the road. An Architect who lives in the area had used his knowledge to propose a scheme that could be viable . The response that this would cost money and that there was no budget did not go down well with people who had paid for permits to park their cars.

Another resident and key campaigner on this issue, proposed a scheme in Guy St that would allow parking on both sides of the road. She drew on examples in other parts of the town where similar sizes of parking spaces and road widths had recently been drawn and that this could be put in practice in Guy Street. Again this was rejected on the basis that latest guidelines require wider spaces and that the narrower spaces in other parts of the town had been laid out in earlier times. Probably during the time when the Feudal System operated from the castle when the lord of the manor could park where the hell he liked by royal charter.

I found it a frustrating meeting, you could feel the frustration on behalf of residents who really wanted to solve this, many had put a lot of work and research into the problem and it appeared they were not being listened to.

Statements that Residents had brought this problem on themselves by owning cars (in a society that almost requires it whether we like it or not) or by living there in the first place (when even young doctors cannot afford to live in the street, let alone anywhere with a drive) met with restrained anger.

I fear the council will go back and tinker with their plan and maybe squeeze a few more spaces out.

What it needs is a bit of imagination and some of the residents’ council tax money (they all have jobs and probably pay a significant amount collectively) spending on a decent scheme as that proposed in Guys Cliffe Terrace that will go a long way towards solving this problem.

Useful information on Street Parking.

The issue of parking in some streets in Warwick is a real issue as I explained in my previous post. I met with some residents yesterday for a photo shoot for the local paper and this morning a few of us were interviewed on BBC Coventry & Warwickshire.

I have found some links to documents that residents might find helpful as they contain the guidelines that are used in planning street layouts. What has impressed me is how communities in Warwick are not just complaining to the council, they have been out measuring the roads and trying to come up with solutions that suit their own areas.

These documents may help anyone with similar problems to understand the guidelines that the council may be using and that way they are armed with the information and will not be blinded by science.

The link below is the Manual for Streets a joint publication produced by the 'Department for Transport' and 'Communities and Local Government'. Chapter 7 and 8 are the most interesting dealing with street geometry.
http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1509196

The following link is for a document from the institute of civil engineers and contains much the same information as the above only without pictures.

http://www.ice.org.uk/knowledge/document_details.asp?Docu_id=479&intPage=9&faculty=5

Parking Spaces halved in Warwick Parking shakeup.

Yesterday morning I went to have a look at the new road marking in Guy Street in Warwick. This is in preparation for the new Decriminalised Parking that will come into force next month.

Now the streets in this area, Guy Street, Cherry Street and Broad Street are popular residential streets of Victorian terraced houses. Each house is about the width of the length of a car. So it does not take a genius to work out that if each household has one car, there will be only just be enough spaces for all the cars.

Local residents have told me that plans were for double yellow lines to be painted along one side, and that is what I found when I arrived. This halves the parking spaces for these roads with no realistic alternative as to where people can park.

Now the roads here are narrow, yet for as long as I have lived in the area residents have managed quite well by parking on both sides, part on the pavement (that appears to be allowed in other local streets where marked) and still have space for service and emergency vehicles.

One proposal residents would like considered is to make each of the roads one way and for careful marking of parking bays on each side of the road part on the pavement to allow enough room for pushchairs. It will be tight of course, yet residents would be happy with this.

This was discussed at the Warwick Area Committee on Tuesday night and I hope that changes can be made before it is too late.

There is one glimmer of hope if changes cannot be made before it comes into force. There will be a review of the impact following the start of the changes and there may be an opportunity to rethink the parking in these roads then.

Of course in the short term this will not help residents who will simply have no where to park.

If you are affected by these changes in these streets or anywhere else in Warwick & Leamington please email me.



Details of the changes can be found on the Warwickshire County Website.