Just Outside the CPZ: April 2011

The Overspill Diaries

I happen to live in a street - Nelson Road N8 - which finds itself on the front line right next to the expanded Crouch End CPZ (Controlled Parking Zone), now being laid out. As I know from previous experience in Islington, being just outside a CPZ is not nice. This is why:

All the overspill vehicles from the CPZ-dodgers turn up on your doorstep. These comprise: lots of cars owned by people who live nearby in the CPZ; the cars of commuters and visitors avoiding parking fees; all the parked-up grey-economy builders' vans, delivery vehicles, breakdown trucks; seldom-used camper vans and so forth. All these flee the CPZ and end up on your street, so making things very difficult and unpleasant for those who actually live there. Plenty of them are here already. It is already difficult to park on many of our streets at the end of the day.

As the CPZs expand, this slurry of vehicles is forced into a smaller and smaller area of non-CPZ streets. The area east of Ferme Park Road bounded by Mountview Road, Uplands Road, and Tottenham Lane will be most affected, with those closest to the surrounding expanded CPZs obviously worst hit.

By expanding CPZs piecemeal in this way, Haringey Council never solves the problem, merely displaces it. Streets which were managing OK suddenly acquire a much more serious parking problem, simply because they are obliged to be close to, but not in, a new or expanded CPZ.

CPZs will not go away. Consequently the only solution, dull though it is and carrying a cost to residents, is to lobby Haringey Council to extend the CPZs to include our area of streets. Further displacement will then occur: the logical conclusion is for the whole of Hornsey and Crouch End to become one large CPZ.

On this blog I intend to show the CPZ overspill effect and the effect on residents' quality of life, just outside it. Leave your comments here - and please contact your councillors and MP if you are affected.

Click here for map of the Crouch End CPZs

Official information on Haringey CPZs

Your local councillors

Lynne Featherstone MP

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

The onslaught begins

So: this is what our street, Nelson Road, looked like, mid-morning on a Monday, shortly before Crouch End's latest expanded CPZ was introduced, coming right up to and including the next street, Ferme Park Road. Compare it with the photo beneath...

Also taken mid-morning on a Monday, but this time in the week just after the expanded CPZ was introduced in the streets adjacent. Notice any difference? Strangely enough, the street is now full, mostly with vehicles we haven't seen here before.

So it's hello to our new friends the breakdown trucks:

The old camper vans:

The seldom-used delivery vans:

And some choice guano-encrusted vehicles:

And a load of ordinary cars that we haven't seen in the street before. Plus the odd added bonus such as a stolen car that suddenly turned up, but which the police spotted and towed away. Thanks, lads. Everyone else of course is here entirely legitimately because we are Just Outside the CPZ.

It's now the Easter holidays, a time when our street used to be half-deserted. Not any more. Come the autumn, the CPZs will expand eastwards along the ridge at the top end of our street, meaning yet more CPZ-dodging vehicles will go looking for a home. Something to look forward to.