Lib Dem win for New Road

Despite New Road being considered for formal parking restrictions several times, no solution has yet been found to reduce the amount of parking within the tiny street. The main issue has been found to be with hospital and university staff, visitors and students parking within the street. Indeed this is a big problem for the area around New road.

Officers have said:

"Residents permit parking has been considered in the past but residents have not supported its implementation. Currently resident permit parking rules both locally and in national legislation do not support single street schemes. However, the parking issues within New Road would be resolved by a resident permit only scheme. With the current resident permit scheme review further consideration could be given to New Road once the results of the review are known."

Following our meeting with New road residents and RBC officers last year, it was decided that funding would be sort to impose an access only restriction to New road. I can now tell you that there have been several 'behind the scenes' discussions on this. Officers have been looking out for 'section 106' funding to carry out this work (received from developments in order to carry out local transport works). Officers have now secured funds from both University and Hospital developments which will pay for the Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) process and the illuminated signs.

The TRO will go to the Traffic Management Advisory Panel (TMAP) on 11 November and the scheme will be advertised in December. If there are no objections then these signs could go up at the end of January (subject to SEB providing the power supply etc). However, if we receive objections they will need to go back to the March TMAP meeting, and so the signs would not be up until at least April.

I hope this is a positive outcome, it should be noted that that an access only restriction will not be supported with enforcement and so there could only be a minimal impact on parking. We will continue to talk to the Hospital to ask them to stop using congested roads for extra/overspill parking.

If this intolerable situation continues I would really like to hear from you all...

Views of New Road in 2009 with nose-to-tail parking, and in the early 1900's - what a difference.