Title : COMMUTERS,  GO HOME !

There is growing concern in our community over the increasing problems caused by commuters parking around Wimbledon Park Station, now the only station on this stretch of the District Line that has available free parking.

The problems caused by daily commuters' parking during the week are compounded by the football fans and West End shoppers using the station during the week-end and by people going on holiday leaving their cars for three or four weeks. This denies normal parking availability to local residents and their visitors, shopkeepers, businesses and essential services like the doctors' surgery. Besides, numerous  cars driving around looking for a parking space generate more car fumes, noise and traffic problems, and the station users, insensitive to an area which they only consider as a parking facility, are notorious for carelessly throwing their litter in our front gardens and emptying their car ashtrays on our pavements.

To assess residents' views on Controlled Parking, the streets round the station were canvassed in May and showed overwhelming support for the introduction of a Controlled Parking Scheme. The Council will undertake formal consultation in the area later this year. The majority of residents seem to favour a scheme that has the following attributes :

• effectively gets rid of long term and short term commuter parking.


• is only in effect for a few hours each day, i e NOT ALL DAY.


• allows maximum access to shops, schools, doctors' surgery and other important local facilities.


• is cheap to administer.


• includes an "inner" and "outer" zone to prevent residents from the outer edge using their parking permit in the streets closest to the station.


• causes least inconvenience to local residents.

A scheme that operates in the middle part of the day for say 3-4 hours would allow the flexibility and mobility outlined above, deter all day parking and allow for proper enforcement by the Council. If you have any constructive suggestions, please write to us.

Cécile Bridgens
Wimbledon Park Parking Action Group

52 Home Park Road