Expanded parking zone controls coming to Abbey Wood
The arrival of Crossrail at Abbey Wood is seeing expanded parking restrictions. After running consultation exercises Greenwich Council have now announced expansion.
In characteristic manner the department managed to spell the town’s name incorrectly a number of times on documents. It says a lot about how much they know about the east of the borough. The continual failure of the department to employ enough staff and enforce parking rules has seen a £9 million gap in budgeted income since 2011/2012.
The consultation letter sent last November had a typo stating replies had to be in by December 2017 and not December 2016.
It will cost £57 for an annual pass and £7 for 10 one-time-only visitor passes. Restrictions last from 11am-1pm for part of the new zone, and 9-11am for most of the extension.
Sizwe James is the Labour councillor in charge of the Highways Department at Greenwich Council who approved the plan. Richard Cornell is Parking Services Manager at Greenwich Council who wrote the report alongside Brian Hanson who is the Principle Engineer.
All three Labour Abbey Wood councillors (Council leader Denise Hyland and Steve Offord, who both live in Eltham, plus Clive Mardner, who rarely replies to emails) supported the scheme but one called for more parking spaces in place of greenery. The report doesn’t reveal which councillor wants that.
It will cost £86,000 to install the CPZ. This is coming from TfL’s £3.5 million annual Local Implementation Plan funding. At least we now know one detailed scheme that Greenwich Council have decided to spend money on. They’ve been resolutely quiet on what is happening with much of the money.
Alex McLeod School called for their area to be included given continual problems with parking around the school.
Whether it’ll be enforced is another matter. Will local residents who play by the rules have to cough up whilst some ignore with impunity? That’s often been the norm in the area. Many drivers simply go off-road and park on grass and paving, or park all-day in restricted time zone areas. I covered the abysmal parking situation last week.
A lot of this mess is because Greenwich Highways Department do not have jurisdiction over much of the greenery. The Housing Department do as a result of it formally being entirely a council estate. Much housing is now private and most greenery and verges should transfer to Highways control to provide easier enforcement.
In reality I expect they wont go down this easier and cheaper route and instead put in large amounts of street furniture, signs, railings, bollards and clutter making the area uglier to demarcate each area of control.
Whatever happens, they’ll have to put up many signs regarding the new controls. Hopefully they are contextual and utilise existing street furniture and walls as much as possible. Design guideline changes made this easier about two years ago. We’ll see if Greenwich Highways have caught up.
Here are maps showing the new boundary extent:
Forgive my ignorance; is it the pink area only where the parking fee will apply or the blue also?
Its both.
How on earth do they justify £86,000 to put up some signs up and paint a few lines on the road. So that’s the salary of 2-3 persons for a year just to do that. Oh yes, I forgot its not their money so they are not bothered about getting value for money.
Also, when the scheme was first introduced around the station area, we were told “you will only be charged what it costs to run the scheme”. That was why it started at £14 for the year (i think). Oh surprise, surprise, then prices hiked up. Still, the same number of wardens so loads of lovely profit.
…Well those council Christmas parties must be paid for some how.
It does seem very high. Presumably much is to waste on signs and poles which could instead be attached to existing street furniture.
RBG created a monster with this. 2 consultations later they have left half of Wilrose Close and half of Commonwealth Way outside the new permit area. Guess where most people will be trying to park that wont be purchasing a permit. With such a large catchment of flats along the road they have clearly not identified enough spaces for the amount of residents. Go along the road to Bostall lane the flats there have 3 large car parks, it just doesn’t make sense! As a resident that constantly puts up with people leaving their cars parked badly for the week while they work in the city it infuriates me that the council have left out half the road! I live in that half they have left out and stupidly would pay for a permit if it meant I could park but now will be hoping that I’ll be able to park ‘fairly near’ my home instead. The map they have used is so old it doesn’t even have Suffolk Place on it which has been there for 5yrs or so with the new eyesore 4 Quadrant houses who have two allocated spaces each…. RBG are a total waste of time when it comes to parking. I’ll await the arrival of a new load of stupidly placed street furniture… happy days!
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in your orange box to support, is not Patreon misspelled? Anyway, what you say demonstrates how different council dept dont liaise with each other (highways/housing) in order to get the parking problem sorted. In Abbey Terr, weve had many parking bays suspended due to xrail works and last month had the road partially resurfaced, but instead of re-instating the bays, xrail have painted a yellow line instead, and RGB have admitted it’s a mistake and are waiting for them to correct it. Meanwhile, residents cannot park there from 9am-5pm weekdays.
Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be a complete mess like Plumstead’s CPZs!
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