Objecting to Zone S2

There had been some ideas that Zone S2 would be coming along early and that registering an objection to it might be worthwhile – after all, it would be nice to be sure that a similar disaster isn’t going to arise when S2 is introduced. To that end, I asked the council when and where the public consultations would be taking place. Guess what, the extensive consultations have already taken place! There was even a public hearing! I feel much better knowing that.

You’ll all be glad to know that everyone in S1 is terribly pleased with the way their new zone has turned out. I’ll bet they are! Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just grumpy because I had to park four streets away again. No residents’ spaces in the Crescent tonight, even though all of the pay and display spaces were completely free.

Anyway, the text is below.

(BTW, I’ve printed out lots of letters but I couldn’t get the labels to print. I’ll have another go tomorrow).

---

Dear Mr Leather

Thank you for your recent email.

Zone S2 is due to commence on 05/03/2007.

Local councillors and residents asked for the CPZ extension to combat problems with commuters parking on residential streets all day, making it very difficult for local residents and their visitors to find parking. An extensive public consultation took place, including a public hearing in May 2005.

Residents within the new zones that began operating in September of this year, N1 and S1, have given us a lot of positive feedback about how the zones are operating so far, allowing them to regularly park near their homes for the first time in years.

We will send you more information and an application form for parking permits in the coming months. If you have any questions, please see www.edinburgh.gov.uk/cpzextension, email us at cpz.extension@edinburgh.gov.uk or call 0131 200 2310.

Kind Regards

Just Ask

-----Original Message-----

From: hughleat@hotmail.com
Sent: 30/10/2006 10:37:53
To: "justask@edinburgh.gov.uk"
Subject: Zone S2 parking

Dear sir/madam,

I wonder if I can ask about zone S2 parking. I would like to know when the new zone will be introduced and when and where public consultations about the zone will be held.

Thank you very much for your time,

Hugh Leather.

A Letter from Mike Pringle (MSP)

I received a reply from Mike Pringle (or maybe his aid, Conor Snowden?). He's the local Member of the Scottish Parliament for us in Marchmont. It seems that progress is being made. We need to get as many letters in as possible. Here's his reply with my original mail beneath it:

From: Conor.Snowden@scottish.parliament.uk [mailto:Conor.Snowden@scottish.parliament.uk] On Behalf Of Mike.Pringle.msp@scottish.parliament.uk
Sent: 27 October 2006 16:40
To: hughleat@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Parking in Zone 8

Dear Mr. Leather,

Thank you for your email of 19th October. I am sorry for the delay but I have a very heavy workload at present due to the parking changes.

I have been contacted by a number of people who have found that because of the new zones more residents of zone 8 have bought permits. Thanks to Lib Dem councillors' suggestions the council is actively considering allowing permit holders to park in two zones. This means those in zone 8 could also park in the new zone S1. Any individual letters of support for this idea you could generate would be most welcome. It is important they are individual letters as these have more weight than a petition. You could send them to me and I will collate them and pass them on to the council.

Please be assured that local councillors David Walker, Marilyne MacLaren and myself are dealing with this matter and I will let you know of any developments.

Yours sincerely

Mike Pringle MSP

Researcher and Constituency Organiser to Mike Pringle MSP, Edinburgh South
The Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1SP
0131 3486179

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh Leather [mailto:hughleat@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 10:14 PM
To: Pringle M (Mike), MSP
Cc: hughleat@hotmail.com
Subject: Parking in Zone 8

Dear Mr Pringle,

I am a resident of Marchmont Crescent and I have found the recent changes in the parking situation in Zone 8 to be a bit frustrating, to say the least. I have begun organising a petition and letter campaign to have something done about it. In the course of discussing with residents, it has been suggested that I get in contact with you to get some advice from you about how best to approach something like this (this is the first time I’ve tried to do something like this).

If you could spare me a little of your time I would be very grateful.

Yours sincerely,

Hugh Leather

Gathering your anecdotes

I thought it might be good for people to record any anecdotal evidence about the parking situation being screwed up. If you can't park or have to go far away, slap a comment about it on this item.

Meeting with Cameron Rose, Chairman of the MSCC

Yesterday I met with Cameron Rose who chairs the local Marchmont and Sciennes Community Council. It was a very fruitful meeting, Cameron was very generous with his time and I snagged a pretty good lunch out of it, too :-) David Rintoul (I hope I have the surname right) turned up as well and offered some good advice; I think he is the chairman of the Tollcross Community Council.

It turns out that other areas are suffering in a similar fashion. Zone 7, Sciennes, looks to be getting crowded and Tollcross has become completely clogged up since Zone S1 was introduced. It's good to hear that we're not alone. If anyone knows anything about other areas, can you let me know?

They gave me some pretty good insights into how the local and city councils work. The things that struck me as the most important are:

• City council elections are coming up in March - that may have positive influence on the councilors' listening skills, if we get going in good time
  
• It is best to present complete solutions to the council, rather than to leave them work to do.
  
• The council is very keen to introduce zone S2 early in February; objections from the public would be frustrating to them

It was felt that we need to make three proposals that will alleviate the problem. They ought to be pretty well thought out and researched, as well as having support from the public. We came up with the following:

1. Dual use parking
2. Merging Zones 7, 8 and S1
3. Turn as many streets as possible into end-to-end parking

The first two seemed really good to use. There was a question that merging the zones might make some 'hotspots' where people with more freedom to park take all the sweet spaces. IMO it can't get any worse than it is now, right? Some people have suggested that zone 8 (and I think probably now zone 7) should be allowed to use S1, but there hasn't been much talk of merging before. It sounds a more equitable arrangement to me and I don't want us to appear greedy. Are there issues with merging?

The last point was a bit less attractive. It might be better to choose something else. The thought is that you can get more cars end-to-end than side on. In streets like Marchmont Crescent we could have cars down one side only, but end on. I think (though I'll get a tape measure out and check) that this would allow more cars in the same space. This one seems more complicated both to explain, research and for them to implement.

Can anyone think of down sides to these, modifications or alternatives? Once we're agreed on these I'll finally get round to writing the form letters up.

We talked about speaking at the next council meeting, but I backed out, coward that I am, feeling it would be better to do some more research and get the story completely straight first. What are all the questions we need answering to support our proposals? It is one thing to say to the council, "You messed up," and quite another to say, "Here's what we think you should do and we're sure it really is going to make the situation better." I feel we ought to get facts and figures, but I'm not sure exactly what - any ideas?

Some of the thoughts for the letters that should go to the council were to add the following:

• Objection to S2 until the problems caused by S1 are fixed
• Explain that one is less likely to visit the out-of-town shopping

There was also a suggestion that the AA or the RAC might be able to add some pressure. Are any of you members?

BTW, the next MSCC meeting is at 7:30 on the 8th of November at the St. Catherine's Argyle church on Grange Road. I'm going, would anyone fancy coming along?

Bins: Fact finding

There is a parallel campaign going on that is specific to Marchmont Crescent only. The council put those big black bins on the house side of the street when they could much better have been placed away from us. Setting aside the fact that they moved them from taking up pay and display spaces to block out residents' parking spaces, it is pretty annoying that they have chosen the worst possible place to put the things.

Well, I had been phoning the council and had received a response along the lines of "Well, we told you all we were going to do it. You had your chance to complain and if you think we're going to change it now just because residents ask us to, you've got another thing coming!" In fact the woman had gone on to say that hundreds of people had complained about the bins being introduced at all and, well, they hadn't listened to them, what the hell made me think they'd listen to me?

I hope that will turn out to be a mistake on their part; you shouldn't antagonise a graduate student who has way too much time on his hands and free access to a photocopier! Time will tell.

I was also told that the reason the bins had been placed on our side of the street is that the lorry needs enough room to lift them and the trees are in the way. It seems to me that whoever decided this all would be a good idea can never have even visited our street. I can just see them in their office on a rainy day saying, "Marchmont Crescent? Oh, yes, that's the one with the trees, isn't it? No need to actually visit it on a day like this." There are huge, and I really mean vast, gaps between the trees. I've seen the lorry do its thing. It's just not that big.

Anyway, that was all a while back and it was got me so incensed as to start this whole campaign thing up.

Last Friday, though, I had a meeting with Jonathan James in the waste management department down in Waterloo Place. Mr. James is the guy there in charge of Road Traffic Orders which are needed to change any line markings on the road. I wanted to find out what I was asking these people to do. After all from my perspective, I thought all they'd need to do was get one person out to check that the lorry could pick up under the trees, one to check any safety issues, one to write it up and that would really be it. How naïve.

No one down at the council knew who Mr. James was which didn't fill me with confidence. When he was tracked down eventually I spoke to him on the phone and he had completely forgotten our meeting. Fair enough, it happens, but I didn't feel as though I was being treated as the most important person on the planet.

And, what did I find out? Not a lot really. Getting a Road Traffic Order can take between 6 and 18 months! It involves every council department under the sun and is not really something that mortals should expect their masters to enter into lightly. Every ounce of body language said that this thing has less chance of happening than George Bush does of being my favourite political character of all time.

I couldn't tease out of him how much actual labour was involved. After all, even if a year and a half goes by before it's done that could still only mean a few hours of actual work.

What I did learn, however, is that to get a Road Traffic Order started you have to get a councillor to order an investigation first. Right, that's the next step then.

How can they oversell like this?

I have details of the number of spaces and permits in Zone 8. I've written them out in a table below which clearly shows the massive scale of the problem.
Here they are:

Street	Residents' Spaces	Residents' Permits Sold
Admiral Terrace	9	12
Alvanley Terrace	0	5
Argyle Park Terrace	10	13
Argyle Place	13	16
Barclay Place	0	8
Barclay Terrace	0	6
Brandfield Street	2	1
Bruntsfield Crescent	12	24
Bruntsfield Place	0	33
Bruntsfield Terrace	5	7
Gillespie Crescent	55	79
Gillespie Street	0	3
Gilmore Place	0	40
Hailes Street	10	10
Hartington Gardens	0	1
Leamington Place	0	2
Leamington Road	3	11
Leamington Terrace	62	90
Lochrin Buildings	0	18
Marchmont Crescent	47	48
Marchmont Road	21	48
Marchmont Street	37	49
Meadow Place	14	21
Richmond Terrace (Mews529)	0	21
Roseneath Place	7	37
Roseneath Street	0	23
Roseneath Terrace	9	30
Spottiswoode Street	37	32
St Peter's Place	0	13
Upper Gilmore Place	28	30
Upper Gilmore Terrace	0	1
Upper Grove Place	22	37
Viewforth	43	65
Viewforth Gardens	16	16
Viewforth Square	12	33
Warrender Park Crescent	32	43
Warrender Park Road	112	171
Warrender Park Terrace	82	105
Westhall Gardens	20	22
Whitehouse Loan	18	1
Total	738	1225

Welcome to the Marchmont Parking Campaign

Hi everyone,

I thought this would be better than writing emails to people interested in the campaign since new people won't be able to read them. This is my first blog ever (showing my age a little) and so I hope this all goes well.

This blog is all about the parking situation in Zone 8 in Edinburgh. Just recently, the council has created a new, neighbouring zone, S1. That area used to have a ton of free parking and lots of people in Zone 8 used to park up there. But, now that they can't, most of Zone 8 are forced to park in their own bit and, well, there just aren't enough spaces.

The council has only provided only 738 residents' spaces but they've sold 1228 permits! Not surprisingly it has become impossible to park. I've been receiving anecdotal evidence from people that they've had to park streets and streets away. Something really needs to be done.