A residents parking scheme will be explored to ease the months of misery for people living in an area of Carlisle.
People living in the city’s Botcherby area packed into St Andrew’s Church in Wood Street for an at times heated public meeting on Tuesda to raise their concerns.
Karl Melville, Cumberland Council’s assistant director of highways and transport and authority officers were there to hear people’s concerns and issues.
Ahead of the meeting Mr Melville said the meeting had been called by the local ward councillor.
He said: “We’ll take on board what residents have got to say, we’ll go away, look at what can be done.”
Councillor Robert Betton (Botcherby, Independent) said the main issues were traffic related and potholes and he added: “Residents are coming along to express any concerns that they have about highways or other things raised tonight in the meeting.”
Issues highlighted ahead of the meeting included: parking in Wood Street; Wood Street being used as a turning road; issues at the junction of Wood Street and Victoria Road; ongoing gas pipe renewal works on Warwick Road; Meadow Brook visitor parking; parking issues on the Durranhill Estate; pothole concerns across the ward; litter around Wood Street; weed management; pavement issues; and road disruption due to ongoing roadworks.
Previously there have been calls for a 20mph zone in Durranhill Road and there were hopes of a HGV weight restriction on Durranhill Road and Warwick Road.
During the meeting, attended by around 100 people, a number of issues were raised.
It was claimed that staff from the neighbouring Durranhill Industrial Estate were parking in the residential area rather than at the businesses where they worked.
People also claimed that emergency services vehicles were prevented from getting to incidents, buses could not complete routes and bins went unemptied because access was impossible due to inconsiderate parking.
People repeatedly called for a residents’ parking scheme to be introduced and that speeding was an issue in the area which was used as a rat run.
Mr Melville said it was fantastic that so many people had attended the public meeting and added: “What we will do is, because we’ve done work before, with residents’ parking, we’ll go away, and we’ll look at the residents’ parking issues.”
He said that the difficulty was that he could not control where people parked and he added: “I can’t control the estate, the actual industrial estate, as to where they park. That’s out of our remit completely.
“The difficulty we’ll have, and it’s about being honest and transparent about it, we can go and look at residents’ parking schemes using the traffic regulation orders that’s in our gift.
“It will be oversubscribed. So, I’m not saying you can’t have it, it’s not my decision, that’s a political decision.
“But you need to consider how it will affect you. Because there aren’t enough spaces to park all of the vehicles that all of you guys have got.”
During the meeting council officers noted the concerns that were raise as well as hotspot locations and residents were assured they would be looked into.
