On Thursday 4th September, the Cabinet Member for Transport Management will decide on the proposed Residents Permit Parking schemes for Abingdon Centre North and Ock Street (including Exbourne Road pictured above).
Following consultation, council officers have recommended that the new permit parking areas should not go ahead.
This will be a relief to many local residents and community groups – including Trinity Church, which feared added difficulties for access and parking under the proposals.
Some people had been calling for tighter parking controls, but the idea of paying over £100 a year for an on-street permit proved unpopular. The revised plans scale things back considerably.
Instead of large permit zones and shared-use bays, only a few targeted changes are now suggested – such as new double yellow lines at certain points to improve safety.
If the recommendation is agreed, the more extensive permit parking scheme will not proceed.
You can read the full agenda and officer reports here.
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Parking restrictions have already been implemented in Bath Street and are planned to follow throughout Abingdon. This is nothing more than a money grabbing exercise by the County Council to extort £132 per year from residents to park cars outside their own homes. I am genuinely horrified and no local councillor should be supporting this.
This is a dreadful proposal. I fail to see how it will improve parking for residents in the likes of Edward Street, Bostock Rd, Conduit Road. This could never have been anything more than a revenue raiser.
I have found there is a contradiction between locals who don’t want a permit parking scheme and locals who object to buildings nearby being converted to flats because “there isn’t enough parking.” You can’t have it both ways.
As a local of the area I do not see any contradiction in not wanting the parking permit scheme whilst also objecting to buildings being converted to flats in the area. The parking permit scheme would have potentially reduced day time parking, which is generally not a problem in the area at the moment and would likely have impacted on the sadly few remaining businesses in the area. It is overnight parking when everyone is home when the issues arise. As an example there are spaces for something like 80 cars on Edward Street and Exbourne Road together, given there are ~45 houses per street if there are two cars per house we could have 180 cars chasing ~80 spaces overnight. Thankfully it is not that bad but residents understand daytime permits don’t help here and so do not want to pay extra to effectively maintain the status quo. This is why increasing the number of dwellings, and therefore vehicles parked overnight in an already high density area is also not favoured by any of the current residents or the highways department, as can be evidenced by planning applications in the area over the last 20+ years.