Parking in the Draytons

[Chris Manton]

Finding a place to park really isn't getting any easier, is it? And for the last couple of years it seems to have been getting progressively worse.

Several probable contributory factors.
1. Its now some of the only free parking in the area - the rest is getting more and more controlled
2. Its very handy for the station - Paddington commuters and Heathrow longer termers
3. Waitrose staff
4. Nearby building site workers
5. Unexplained influx of commercial vehicles (maybe related to items 1 & 4)
6. Post Office vans

There may well be others.
Items 3 & 6 might be negotiable and item 4 will hopefully dissipate in time, but even then the problem would probably remain .

If Drayton's residents would like to have an easier time of finding parking spaces, then maybe once again the time has come to consider making the Draytons a controlled parking zone (CPZ).

Do others have views?

[Chris Manton]

You're right that getting a high take up is important, since otherwise its not going to tell us much at all.

But a door-stepping exercise will mean a lot of work. Though I would do my best to contribute, I have very little time available. Gerald - do we have a mechanism for asking other DCA members for their help?

In the meantime I'll look in to options for the identifiers.

[John Popham]

As councillors we are aware that the problem has been getting worse. Before Christmas we spent two evenings knocking on doors asking people whether or not they would support a CPZ. A number of things came out of that. There is support for a CPZ, but it was not as overwhelming as I had expected. I was also surprised that a number of people said said that they did now own a car.

However we decided that there was enough support to have a formal consultation. The next step was to get the Draytons included in the consultation programme. We were successful and when the 2010/11 CPZ consultation programme was drawn up for the next financial year, the Draytons was included.

The next stage will be to decide on who we should consult. No decisions have been made on that score. However there seems to be a general concensus that the core area should be an area bounded by Manor Road, Drayton Road, Sutherland Road and Drayton Green which would therefore include Draytons Avenue, Gardens & Grove. The council would consult about setting up a CPZ in the core area. If we simply put a CPZ in to Manor Road and Drayton Avenue, it would just push the problem into Drayton Gardens & Drayton Grove and in weeks we would be consulting again.

The Council would also consult wider perhaps into roads like Courtfield Gardens, Lynton & Highview and ask the question as to whether if a CPZ was put into the core area, would they want to be included.

Once a CPZ is introduced into an area, you have the problem of displaced parking. If only a few roads are included, you end up with CPZ creep. The aim is to look at a complete area and come to a decision that is right for that area.

I stress again that as yet no decision has been made about zone boundaries, but these are my views based upon what has happened in other CPZ.

I hope that helps the debate.

[Marie-Louise Childs]

Shall we try and get a group together and try the disc idea out on Drayton Road perhaps? Could we use DCA funds for the discs?


Gerald Power said:

I think it could work but we would perhaps want to try one road as a test, the key would be to get as near 100% of residents displaying the symbol as possible through door knocking.

Marie-Louise Childs said:

Chris

I think it's a great idea and the sooner we get started, the better. I'm happy to help. It would be helpful if we could get residents from each road to deliver the discs and encourage people to get thinking about a solution. I also think it would be helpful to run the exercise at different times of day, and if possible, during during term and half term, to get the full measure of parking in this area. I don't think a CPZ is the answer. It really only works in a small defined area, otherwise it just creates problems elsewhere - as we know. Ideally the council needs to take a wider view of parking in the borough - with CPZs lots of road space is not being made the best use of. Does the urban plan for the borough cover parking?

Chris Manton said:

Hi Marie-Louise

I certainly agree that knowing numbers would be a good thing.

I'd previously suggested that we might produce or obtain some simple small identifier and ask all residents to display in their vehicles. That way we'd have a chance of counting...

What do you think?

[Chris Manton]

By all means, let's start with Drayton Road.

I can design and print paper discs, (well, actually squares, because cutting discs without a die is a nightmare), which could just sit on the dashboard. I can fix it so that they have simple codes allowing us to track the road the owner lives in or even serial numbers back-traceable who we issued them to. Let me know what you think.

But a professional circular sticky that would last and look really top notch would cost a fair bit... so I think that's probably out of our league - unless the council want to play seriously. Which maybe they just might if we did all that quantifiable research for them... John?

[Ewen McKinnon]

Hi Chris - I think some good ideas here and additional information and data around the parking situation can only help inform the consultation and the solution. I think one problem with the car sticker approach is you can't prove a negative i.e. is an absence of sticker because the car doesn't belong to the street or because someone hasn't put a sticker in their car - I think this point has been made that we really need 100% takeup. I wonder if councils have used other approaches to this type of survey? For example I know that councils can do number plate requests to DVLA. Do you think the council could do a bulk number plate request for all cars registered in the Draytons - and send the list to the DCA - without addresses - just street names. It would then only take one rep per street an hour or so to check each car at different times of day and total a) the number of cars registered in street that are parked in street vs those not registered, b) the number of parking spaces free at that time of day. We could quickly build up a picture by doing this. I'm not against the sticker approach at all - I think it will certainly help - but just wonder whether there is a more effective/ efficient way of doing this with the councils support?




Chris Manton said:

By all means, let's start with Drayton Road.

I can design and print paper discs, (well, actually squares, because cutting discs without a die is a nightmare), which could just sit on the dashboard. I can fix it so that they have simple codes allowing us to track the road the owner lives in or even serial numbers back-traceable who we issued them to. Let me know what you think.

But a professional circular sticky that would last and look really top notch would cost a fair bit... so I think that's probably out of our league - unless the council want to play seriously. Which maybe they just might if we did all that quantifiable research for them... John?

[Chris Manton]

Really nice approach. Given such a list it would make for a pretty bulletproof basis for research.

We can ask - John P is in this group... John?

Chris

[Ewen McKinnon]

I have sent a note to DVLA to see if this is possible either for us to request the data or for the council. May take a few days for them to respond.

Chris Manton said:

Really nice approach. Given such a list it would make for a pretty bulletproof basis for research.

We can ask - John P is in this group... John?

Chris

[Chris Manton]

I have also posted the following as a direct comment to John P in the hope that it may reach him faster than this forum.

"Hi John,

Ewen's had a good idea for helping the Draytons Community Association to do some really useful background research on parking here. (See separate discussions).

If we could obtain a list of vehicles that are registered with addresses in the Draytons, then we could very easily establish the proportion of non-resident parking by doing simple non-match counts. With this data it should be possible to extrapolate whether a CPZ 's effect would be likely to make for a worthwhile increase in available spaces, or if there are already so many resident's vehicles that we face saturation with or without a CPZ.

Ewen has written to the DVLA, but it is probable that obtaining vehicle registrations would require an official request.

I stress that we do NOT want or need to know the actual addresses or owners' names. Just the number plates that are registered in the Draytons area that is being considered for the new zone. I believe that this de facto anonymity should remove any objection on the grounds of privacy or database protection.

Could you and/or your colleagues possibly look into this for us?

If you can help us, then I think we'll be in a strong position to help you by gathering factual information that you'd be able to include in any consultation to better inform those included in it.

Regards,
Chris
"