Car parking at Kingham Station

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the Cotswold Journal:

Station parkers are verging on accident

A North Cotswold woman is calling for action to stop commuters parking their cars on the verge near Kingham railway station rather than pay to park in the station car park.

Joan Cansfield, aged 69, whose home is on the B4450 Bledington Road near the station, fears that drivers manoeuvring their cars on and off the verge will cause a serious, possibly fatal, accident on that stretch of road.

^It worries me that there will be a terrible accident. There have been a few near misses and horn blaring. I^m genuinely scared someone^s going to die,^ said Mrs Cansfield.

She said many of those parking on the verges were early commuters arriving to catch the 6am train to well-paid jobs in London. ^It turns out that a number of them are bankers. They^ve got the money but they don^t want to spend ^3 a day to park in the station car park,^ said Mrs Cansfield.

She said wooden stakes had been put on the verge from the railway bridge to the Langston Priory Nursing Home but drivers were just parking further along. ^I recently put polite notices on their windscreens, with their registration number, saying please don^t trash the grass verge, please use the car park provided.

"They stopped for two or three days but then gradually came back,^ said Mrs Cansfield. ^They think the rules don^t apply to them.^

PC Phil Marstin said: ^The issue of vehicles parking at Kingham Station has been a problem for some time, but recently wooden posts have been put up to alleviate the problem. This does appear to have significantly reduced the problem but I understand some vehicles are still being parked in this area. If anybody comes across a vehicle that is parked in a dangerous position I urge them to contact the police immediately.^

[johoare]

I guess it depends whether they're being parked illegally or not..

If they really are being parked in a dangerous place then it needs to be made illegal.. If it were already illegal then I guess the local council/police will already be dealing with it..

Meanwhile, if it's not a "no parking" area currently,  I'm not sure exactly what "rules" they are breaking...

[willc]

It's a roadside verge covered in grass, so clearly not intended for use as a car park and to get up the verge off the road you need a 4x4 with a lot of ground clearance.

The parts where posts and rails have been placed recently had been badly damaged, with the grass and soil worn away but the more determined offenders have just moved on to the adjacent areas that - stupidly, I'd say - were not dealt with at the same time. I expect it's only a matter of time before the county council puts in more posts.

It's only about half-a-dozen vehicles but they are definitely serial offenders.

In terms of road safety, it's opposite a nursing home and busy light industrial workshops and close to the bridge taking the road over the rail line, which drops away at the far side, so visibility for approaching traffic is not fantastic. Police have towed at least one vehicle away recently.

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

If locals at Kingham think they have problems with cars on grass verges, then come and see the situation at Hanborough. There can be 20+ cars parked on the grass verges at Hanborough station on most weekdays with the station car park being 100% full by 06.30. The road at Kingham is relatively little used compared to the A4095 at Hanborough where at peak hours there is a continual flow of traffic and people manoevering onto the grass verge can cause a traffic queue for a mile or so back. Whilst Kingham is a busy car park, when I travel through on the train I can usually spot a few vacant spaces in the car park around mid-morning so I guess it is like the article says, car drivers being to mean to pay the parking charge so they deserve to get done for obstruction by the police. At Hanborough on most days you just cannot find a space after 06.30 within the station.

The Police have a difficult job. In law, as I was taught many years ago, your only right as a vehicle driver is to "pass and repass". i.e. keep moving. Technically as soon as you stop moving on the highway you are creating an obstruction and could in theory be charged. Your only right to park on the highway (and that includes the carriageway and the grass verge) is where there is a specific permission, i.e. where parking is marked out or in such locations as residents parking zones. Our local police have told me that they only deal with these problems where there is a real obstruction rather than a technical breach so probably more wooden posts would be the most obvious step to deal with this problem at Kingham.

[johoare]

Maybe double yellow lines would help as (I think) that means you also can't park on the pavement/verge next to them either and so those cars could then be fined/clamped/towed away?

[willc]

I don't think the people involved would be overly bothered by a fine - unless they got ticketed on daily basis, which was how police in Moreton-in-Marsh finally stopped one person who was in the habit of parking all day in a short-stay space outside the post office, at the end of the station access road.

I believe the placing of lines of posts on the verges at Hanborough is imminent but I expect that will just move the problem along the road somewhere else in the village in the absence of a car park extension.