HOMEZONE - SHARING STREET SPACE

Notes from 3 November 2010 meeting at Joe and Amanda's house

Present: Estelle, Paul Markman, Tony, Clare, Jeremy, Joe, Amanda, Glynis and apologies from Felix (7 houses represented)

Purpose of discussion

To share ideas on how we might achieve a better balance between cars and people in the street and to create more social/play space. 

Firstly thanks to Joe and Amanda for hosting the meeting and for Joe's preliminary drawings and plans that were protecting on their living room wall helping us to picture and discuss how we might rearrange parking and pedestrian areas. So professional.

Numbers

We have 49 houses in the street, to date 8 houses with off-road parking space and approx 60 cars/vans parked in the street (sampled on Sunday evenings). We have about 36 children and young people living in the street and a good number of grandchildren and friends visiting on a regular basis (that is a lot of young lives). We know of two houses that currently do not have a car and one house that has three vehicles.

Suggestion for HOMEZONE option

This would involve making Torbay Road one way for cars going from Corkland to Sandy Lane and create parking bays in parallel batches on alternating sides of the street forcing drivers to slow right down. It would be likely to deter people using it as a through road. We would park at an angle to the pavement, side by side. Bollards would be introduced to protect pavement area and paved areas with trees/flower boxes to protect end cars

Pros for children

• slow traffic
• reduce numbers of cars
• safer to ride bikes/scooters

Pro for adult car owners

• retain numbers of parking spaces
• clearly defined space (reduce space-waste)
• easier parking with less chance of parking accidents
• open doors without worrying about passing traffic

 General benefits

• increase space to socialise safely
• encourage ownership of shared street space by adults and children
• feel safer place to live
• quality of pavement is now poor so good time to consider improvement options
• increase value of houses?

Issues

• can we have adequate safe pavement space?
• protecting the cars parked on the end of bays
• funding?
• ensuring adequate width for service and emergency vehicles 
• is there sufficient support for discussed option?
• are there other options for the street?
• are there other options for Chorlton Triangle?

Seven houses were represented at this first meeting. We have the feeling/knowledge of there being good support in the street for some sort of HOMEZONE project

Next Step

• Share notes of discussion with all residents
• Find out what the council process is for making any improvements to the street -Joe - Highways, Glynis - Ward coordinator and local councillors
• Explore this and other options with residents - 'Parking Party' - experiment with a small part of the street for an afternoon
• Explore the idea of having a local car sharing scheme - Dave and Paul to pursue :)