On-street Residents Permit Parking scheme in Lower Caversham

Overview

We have been asked to consider the introduction of an on-street Residents Permit Parking scheme in Lower Caversham, due to parking pressures in this area of Reading.

An informal consultation was conducted in January this year, the results demonstrating that there was majority support for further development of a scheme.

Detailed proposals have been developed and we are now seeking your feedback on these designs in this further informal consultation.

DESIGNING A PARKING SCHEME

When designing any parking scheme, there are many factors to consider:

• The restriction – The original consultation letter provided an overview of the types of parking restrictions that are available to us and the considerations of each.
• Parking bays – The bays need to be sufficiently wide to accommodate modern cars, as being parked outside of a bay could not only restrict the remaining road width, but also be considered as a parking contravention. We typically design our bays to be 2.1m wide.
• Remaining road widths – We must ensure that the width of road available to moving vehicles is sufficient to accommodate emergency service vehicles, as well as delivery vehicles and general traffic, for the length of the street. This will influence whether we are able to design a scheme with bays on both sides of the street, or an alternative solution needs to be adopted. Such alternatives could include:
  • Bays on one side of the street, with double-yellow-lines on the other side; or
  • ‘Permit parking past this point’, which has no bay markings and puts the responsibility to park appropriately onto the motorist.

The scheme that we have initially designed contains a combination of bay-marked and ‘permit parking past this point’ restrictions, with the objective being to appropriately maximise parking space availability, while also providing bays with some short-duration visitor parking nearby.

The area around Send Road (south of Gosbrook Road) is challenging, due to the narrow road widths prohibiting the installation of marked bays on both sides of the street. We have provided two options for this area:

1. Permit parking past this point – This could maximise parking space availability, but all parked vehicles must display a permit.
2. As above, but adding a shared-use (bay-marked) element in Send Road. This would allow some limited daytime parking for non-permitted vehicles (visitors), but would reduce the potential parking space availability, compared with option 1.

HAVE YOUR SAY

At the bottom this page you will find a document that contains the design proposals for this area scheme. You will also find a document that contains the ‘additional information’ that formed part of January’s informal consultation pack, as a reminder of the available restrictions and consultation area.

Should you have any feedback on specific details of the designs, we kindly ask that you complete the feedback form below so that your comments may be considered. Please note that we are not seeking general support or objection to the potential introduction of a Resident Permit parking scheme at this time.

There will be a public drop-in session, where you can discuss the design with officers. This will be held at Caversham Library, between 2pm and 6:45pm on Thursday 27th September.

This informal consultation will close at 11:59pm on Sunday 30^th September 2018.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT 

Your feedback will be considered and the designs may evolve accordingly. It is intended that final design proposals will be reported to our Traffic Management Sub-Committee at their meeting in November 2018. At this meeting we are intending to seek approval to conduct a formal consultation on these final designs.

The formal consultation will provide an opportunity to formally support or object to the introduction of a scheme.