That'll be nice

My local council (LB Richmond) have just informed us that motorcycles must
be parked at right angles to the kerb in my local CPZ, else you'll get an
£80 ticket (discounted to £40 if paid within 14 days).

For the most part you wouldn't want to park side on to the kerb cos the
camber'd most likely tip your bike over, but how sweet of them to issue
tickets for bikes parked "at the wrong angle".

That said, there are streets (such as the one that I live on) where a bike
parked at right angles to the kerb is going to stand out like a target for
every sodding van, school bus, and Chelsea tractor that wends its way down
the skinny little back street (and yeah we do get times when there's not
much parked on the street, it just happens).

They also go on to mention that between 10am and 12pm Monday to Friday
you'll be allowed to park across peoples' driveways so long as you have a
parking permit... how sweet of them... then they say that outside of those
hours it will be illegal to do so without the householder's consent (which
apparently is London wide legislation now) but since they've got no
mechanism for prosecuting offenders it'll basically be tough shit for the
householder. Fortunately for me this piece of non joined up thinking
doesn't apply to shared access driveways, so hopefully I shan't be blocked
in.

And finally, just to really rub it in, not only do they inform us that we'll
have less parking than we used to once they introduce the CPZ but we'll also
be expected to cough up £35pa (rising to £45pa in 2005) per car to park on
roads maintained by the same authority who already collect loadsamoney from
us in council tax and for which we've already bought valid road tax. Good
init? (They're not charging motorcycles for parking permits, which is the
one bit of common sense that I can find in this letter they've sent me)

Local authorities, dontcha just luv 'em?

U all park safely now!

 

Parking is a problem here in Brighton and Hove with most of the terraced
houses having two cars and the larger houses, now flats, having one or
two cars per flat. There simply isn't the room.

When the Council (NOC) introduced parking permits in my bit of Hove (£80
pa per car) it sorted the parking problems overnight and IMO has been a
success.

People (shoppers, tourists and the like) can now park (10p P&D for 30
min, £2 all day) on the roadside for shopping. Double parking is a thing
of the past. Dumped cars go within a few days.

I can now park the car within sight of my door and the entry where my
bikes live is no longer permanently blocked

There are downsides, other than the annual bill. There is a large
'fleet' of Traffic wardens and they do not **** about. B&H has one of
the highest level of ticket issued and lowest successful appeal rates.
The wardens all have cameras when they ticket they take a photo. There
is no argument...

I have to buy residents vouchers (£1 for 24hr) for my visitors which is a
pest, but at least they can park! Bikes are free though.

The other issue is the problem tends to move to the boundary and the
controlled zones are inexorably moving to the outskirts. The local
garages have a problem with the customers cars they park in the back
streets. But the majority of wardens seem to tip them off and give the
mechanics time to run down the road putting 30 min tickets in the
affected cars.

On the whole its been a success, IMO.

 

<wakes up>

Which bit of LB Richmond is that, then?

And wossa CPZ? Sounds murrican to me...

--
| Wik -UKRMHRC#10- 2003 R1150GSA -DC#1 -'FOT#0 'FOF #39 - BOD#12 BOB#12
|# You don't believe me | "Experience is the worst teacher.
|That the scenery | It always gives the test first
|Could be a cold-blooded killer. | and the instruction afterward."
***** human response from wik at blueyonder dot co dot uk *****

 

CPZ = Controlled Parking Zone

They introduced this in Bedford a couple of years back. It's raised so
much cash............................... sorry, that should be reduced
parking congestion....................... that they want to expand the
area to more of the town.

Bikes park for nothing here too. Although I got a couple of tickets at
the start, which they rapidly cancelled when I protested.

Hopefully Richmond will demonstrate some common sense (bwaaaahahaha)
about parking at right angles. The 'Parking Shop' here said that as
long as I wasn't taking up a cars sized space (which I interpreted as
parking parallel to the pavement) they were happy.

--
Stritchy
CX1100 'Ermintrude' BPoD (tm Pip)
HOC#14808 COFF#23 MiB#17 two#52
BOTAFOT#129 BOTAFOF#44 BREast#4
Take the PISS out of Stritchy to e-mail

 

Ahh... the "Z" I got, it was the number of permutations of "C" and "P"
that led me astray.

[snip]

Hmm... We've not heard 'owt about it in our bit of LBR, so I'm guessing
it's Richmond itself, which, certainly for the town centre, I could well
believe...
--
| Wik -UKRMHRC#10- 2003 R1150GSA -DC#1 -'FOT#0 'FOF #39 - BOD#12 BOB#12
|# You don't believe me | "Experience is the worst teacher.
|That the scenery | It always gives the test first
|Could be a cold-blooded killer. | and the instruction afterward."
***** human response from wik at blueyonder dot co dot uk *****

 

Kew, about 200 metres from the Victoria Gate.

Controlled Parking Zone. You know, areas where if you haven't got the
appropriate permit displayed in your windscreen you get a parking ticket.
Plenty of Richmond already has them.

 

Zobo Kolonie wrote:

You're having a laugh here, right?
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Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Nope.
Technically you will still need the permission of the householder though,
and the householder can phone in a complaint if they haven't given their
permission which in theory will lead to the issuing of a ticket, only during
the controlled hours though, 10:00 to 12:00 Monday to Friday, at any other
time the local authority admit that they do not have procedures to deal with
illegally parked vehicles across your driveway. However, the local authority
are nevertheless going to put parking bays across peoples' driveways so you
can imagine what will happen, spod drives along looking to park, spies
parking bay, and parks there, screw your driveway, spectacularly so if it's
outside the controlled hours. It'll also be interesting to see if the
private parking enforcement company can actually respond to complaint calls,
or what they can actually do, I mean think about it, if I've got a valid
parking permit and I park across your driveway how does the law work? Surely
if the householder says "I didn't give my permission" and I say "yes you
did" then that's that? Are the parking bods actually going to get involved
in that sort of dispute? (Well mebbe if they're taking a cut of the fine).

 

Good god

And this is regarded as a good idea by the council? Boggle


--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

'Good' wasn't a word that sprang to my mind 'pon reading the document they
sent me, but IKWYM.

Hard to say. The machinations of our local council are difficult to fathom
at the best of times.

On the plus side they're really rather good at the things that keep the area
looking pretty. Try popping along to the riverside terraces by those poncy
bars in Richmond at about 07:30 on a Sunday morning in the summertime and
you will see a veritable army of rubbish collectors out cleaning up the
empty champagne bottles, glasses, beer bottles, and general trash left
behind by the drinkers on Saturday night. It's an impressive sight.

They do cough money towards tarting up small areas that need it too, like
the area immediately east of Kew Gardens station[1].

But on the other hand, yer actual services verge on the non existent. For
example the library service is about the worst I've ever seen, even my my
old school library knocked spots off of the central reference library in
Richmond; yes the library service is dreadful (not that I use it, well you
just wouldn't). The branch library here in Kew is only open for half the
week anyway these days.

The traffic / road planning department appear to go out of their way to
ensure that traffic flow through the area will be as bad as it possibly can
be. Examples include the concrete lumps they put either side of the road
with bollards in the middle along Manor Rd a few years ago. These caused
enough accidents and general mayhem that even our mindless local authority
wallahs took them away again fairly promptly. Or the bits and bobs they did
to Sandycombe Rd / Kew Gardens Rd, they've turned what used to be a free
flowing road that was easy to cross on foot into a rolling traffic jam that
can be a bit of a bind to cross on foot in the mornings, and since the
installation of the somewhat dangerously located (IMO) pedestrian island
I've seen the aftermath of three crashes, two of which involved motorcycles
actually, the other was a Hackney Carriage (into the bollards, they can be a
bit of a menace).

Who is responsible for the siting of speed cameras? We've got some in some
most unusual locations, at least the locations are unusual if they are
'safety' rather than 'revenue' cameras.

Then there's the new developments that they've given planning permission to.
It's starting to get really quite funny actually. For example Kew Riverside
was built on top of the old sewage works and is immediately adjacent to the
civic tip - so it stinks, though you still have to cough >£1,000,000 to buy
yerself a house there (utter madness, I'd not live there even if it was
cheap). Notably, compared to most of Kew Kew Riverside isn't particularly
conveniently located for anything either, except for the civic tip and the
crematorium (well I suppose you can hoof it to Marks 'n Sparks at the retail
park). Oh, did I mention the crematorium? Well the authority gave planning
permission for developers to build nine new houses on the previously verdant
strip of land alongside the access road that leads to the crematorium and
nowhere else. Those properties will be wedged between the civic tip and the
crematorium, so the owners will have grieving families to the left and
stinky builders' vans to the right... lovely eh?

There's talk of councillors taking backhanders, I suppose there will always
be such rumours, but one councillor in particular does seem rather shifty
about the whole subject (here endeth the rumour).

When we have meetings (forced by residents rather than prompted by
councillors) with the councillors they turn up (sometimes) and expect that
they'll get away with just saying "this is what we're going to do..." before
announcing some new lunacy. They never cease to seem surprised when people
stand up and say "that's not really a very good idea you know", and thus far
I'm not aware of them ever taking any notice of alternative proposals (some
of which really are quite reasonable IMO) put forward by concerned parties.

There's more, but that'll do for now methinks.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that it doesn't seem to matter which party
has control of the town hall, we used to have a Lib Dem council who were
shit by and large, and now we've got a Conservative council who are also
shit by and large.

We've got very clean streets and lots of traffic wardens though.

[1] Funny story... there was a Ferrari dealership there, loads of expensive
metal, but the grapevine has it that they weren't paying their rent and were
going to be evicted so they did a moonlit flit... the premises they occupied
has recently been used to flog cut price ladies' underwear from, bit of a
come down I thought