http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/cycling-parking-church-street-chesterton.html

I am wondering if there has been any discussion within your residents’ group about access to the development for those canvassing for the upcoming elections.

I know this has been discussed a couple of times in previous years but I was wondering what the current position is.

Do you have any plans to enable election related debate and discussion (involving candidates?) via your discussion forum?

I think the surface will prove costly for the residents of the rest of the city to maintain and should not have been permitted. I think maintaining the roads is a core function of the state and new developments ought be built with a view to being rapidly adopted. I don’t think we should be building private “gated communities” in the city.

Whenever I have visited the development the problem appears to be not the lack of parking; but the way the parking is managed. There are one or two apparantly fly-posted signs urging “no parking” in particular locations, and a handful of cars parked illegally (on Church Street) or “improperly” (on the development).

Yes, I agree an amount of due diligence is a good idea. But everyone has visitors, and they sometimes need somewhere to park - this isn’t about car ownership.

Furthermore, the developer told everyone there was ample visitor parking on site - and when I rang the council before purchasing they confirmed this!

Ian

Ian

If there’s nothing else people want to use the £42,000 for, fixing the potholes still around on Chesterton High Street might be an idea. I’ve been somewhat slow about reporting most of them - I’m a cyclist and therefore I only tend to notice the ones near the kerb - but a lot of the road surface is actually fairly heavily broken up.

If you hear anything about when this meeting at St Andrews Hall might happen, please do tell us. I live in East Chesterton and I’d be very happy to report back to you on what was said.

As Church Street Chesterton is on the cycle route the question was just about relevant; though officers working on the cycle scheme had not been made aware of the pot of money related to the Vie development until very recently. Cllr Blair, apparently responding to the Vie residents’ lobbying for visitor parking, asked for changes to permit more parking on Church Street to be considered as part of the cycle route scheme. County Council transport officers were unanimously highly critical of the appropriateness of Cllr Blair’s suggestion; they politely pointed out that increasing the amount of cars parked on a street is not generally seen something which improves safety of cyclists.

Cllr Blair was very careful to try and protect the integrity of the Liberal Democrat anti-car planning policies by claiming that her request to allow parking on Church Street was not for the benefit of Vie residents. Cllr Blair suggested that those driving to use the recycling bins, recreation ground and old people’s homes in the area were those who would benefit from increased parking on Church Street. Councillors appeared in agreement that any parking regulations which would enable commuter parking on the street would be undesirable.

Kevin Wilkins, who was chairing the Traffic AJC, is a Chesterton Councillor. I believe this explains why he allowed extensive debate about parking in Chesterton despite it being only tangentially related to an agenda item. Councillor Rosenstiel addressed the meeting saying that he would usually leave such matters as parking restrictions to ward councillors but felt he had something to add given he had once worked in the area and had in the past commuted by cycle though it regularly. Cllr Rosenstiel’s speech stated that the double yellow lines on Church Street were anachronistic regulations left over from an era where St. Andrew’s Road was an industrial and large vehicles used Church Street regularly. He said he was in favour of reviewing the situation and allowing some parking.

Councillor Clare Blair also asked for some of the £42,000 to be spent on the turning from St. Andrew’s Road, Chesterton onto the cycle path to the new Riverside Bridge. Cllr Blair said that while she had no depth perception in her vision and it might be just her, she thought the turning needed remodeling to allow a smoother trajectory. I thought she was rather hamming it up when she dramatically claimed she gets off her bike and walks it from St. Andrew’s Road onto the cycle path as the junction has been too badly designed for her to cope with cycling through.

Councillors at the Traffic AJC meeting were cautioned by officers against trying to find projects for the £42,000 if there was nothing they really wanted to do; officers suggested giving the money to back to the developers might be the best course of action if there were no projects which clearly needed it.

Councillors pointed to an item on their project list for introducing “waiting restrictions” to the “Logans Way, St Andrew’s Road, Longworth Ave-Mariner’s Way area” which is currently marked “No source of funding currently identified” and suggested some of the £42,000 be put towards that.

Committee members and councillors couldn’t agree on the exact sum of developer’s funds in question. The money had been transferred from the City Council to the County as it was to be spend on highways; the county appeared to think it might amount to £45,000 plus interest.

Liberal Democrat Susannah Kerr briefly attended the meeting, and as a ward councillor was able to speak on the Church Street discussion. Cllr Kerr primarily complained about not being consulted as ward councillor; and got into an argument with the committee manager who insisted that she had been kept up-to-date with proposals. Cllr Kerr also attempted to argue against putting speed humps in Church Street; on the basis that the County Council had incompetently installed cushions on Fen Road which one can drive in-between. Cllr Blair also argued against speed-humps on Church Street, making the case that she believed there would be local opposition to them.

After the meeting Cllr Blair spoke of her intent to hold a meeting with Vie residents and other constituents in St. Andrew’s hall in Chesterton she said she would invite council officers and others to attend. I am concerned that this will give Cllr Blair the opportunity to say one thing in secret direct to her constituents, away from the press and public, and another in public. It appears that Vie residents have been successful in persuading the Liberal Democrats running the City Council to take a more sensible approach to things like designing bike stores and allocating responsibility for waste and recycling areas in future developments. If Cllr Blair and her Lib Dem colleagues have, in fact, done some degree of a U-Turn on their anti-car policies here and are accepting a mistake has been made this could have consequences across the city, particularly for new developments.

Cllr Blair appears to like to meet her constituents and council officers in secret meetings in her ward (she attends police consultative meetings along with police and council officers which, unlike elsewhere in the city, are not open to the public). I think it would be better if she tried to get county council transport officers to attend the North Area Committee; where they could be questioned by all the area’s councillors in an open, public meeting. If she could arrange for a North Area Committee to be held in Chesterton, and encourage more people from that part of the city to attend and contribute, that would be be excellent.

Despite not having any idea how a cycle route might deal with the pinch-point at the Milton Road end of Arbury Road (with Cllr Pellew saying he doesn’t cycle down this stretch of road as he feels it’s too unsafe); councillors agreed to a public consultation on proposals to improve the cycleway; comments on Church Street can presumably be fed into this; but it wasn’t made clear who will be consulted and how the consultation will be run.

During the debate Cllr Blencowe heckled Cllr Blair when she called Arbury Park, Orchard Park, ridiculing Cllr Blair’s attempt to change the locally meaningful name reflecting around two thousand years of history to a generic widely used one. Cllr Blencowe also on a number of occasions took it upon himself correct Cllr Blair who kept talking about “St Andrew’s Street” (which isn’t in her constituency) rather than “St. Andrew’s Road” (which is).

http://www2.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/db/council2.nsf/e0c624b01b2e9ade80256b14004eb73b/2bee2d54470e33af802576ac00433588?OpenDocument

Ultimately, more car parking space on developments results in higher costs, because fewer dwellings can go in the same amount of space (unless underground provision is implemented, though that also increases costs). And people have free choice in the market place not to spend potentially tens of thousands extra in order to have more parking.

If the new residents of the Vie development do not have enough parking for their needs, the option is surely open to them to buy land and pay for it at the commercial value it would cost them. Either that, or due diligence should have been performed when considering moving there.

I suggest that there is demand around the city for car-free and low-car developments, which would result in cheaper and more attractive housing. Many streets in Petersfield, for instance, must have only 50% car ownership, because parking is only on one side (and the width of a house is the same as the length of a car). This is a good demonstration of how people *do* base their choice of where to live based on how much parking they need.

I don’t see why public space (which is not free) should be taken up for yet more parking of private property.

*The City Council are going to moor their play-boat on land adjacent to the Cantabs Boat House. They’re also going to have a new river access for canoeists etc. there too. This is the third location they’ve announced for this.

*There are negotiations with the Environment Agency about what, if any, recreation facilities can be placed on various elements of the flood plain either side of the ramp to the new bridge. The EA are opposing anything hard - so no tennis courts or Multi-Use Games areas.

*The Old Chesterton Residents Association complained about a lack of consultation about plans for the nature reserves / green areas / pitches etc. They complained that what consultation there had been had focused on adjoining neighbours and excluded those living slightly further away who still had a substantial interest in the area. (Cambridge City Council appears not to like to draw much attention to its consultations, though I thought OCRA was one group it appeared to be very close to - with councillors regularly attending OCRA meetings).