We’ve reported a couple of times recently on the parking issues on St. Ann’s Road North – that some cars from the Cheadle Royal Business Park have started parking on St. Ann’s Road North, cause problems for residents.
At Cheadle Area Committee yesterday we received a report from Council officers looking at what can be done. I don’t have the report online, I’m afraid (happy to copy it if anyone particularly wants to see a copy).
The summary of the report and our response to it is:
- When it’s been checked, there have been between 4 and 14 cars parked on the eastern side of St. Ann’s Road North near the pedestrian entrance to the Cheadle Royal site.
- The business provides employment for around 2,500 people – with maybe another 1,500 moving to the site over time as it expands.
- People who work on the business park have the problem both of parking on site (there’s a lot of parking space, plus a lot more green space that’s not developed, but it seems some of the businesses on the park aren’t leasing enough spaces for their staff).
- There’s an additional problem for people on the site: the one exit is onto the A34 and it can take a very long time to get off the park and onto the A34, and then to move on from there. As we all know, the Cheadle Royal roundabout grinds to a halt in the evening rush hour.
- MUSE have recently launched a commuter shuttle bus and are looking to expand bus provision.
- MUSE have said they are unable to control parking off-site by people working on the business park
- Highways officers say there’s no evidence of the parking on St. Ann’s Road North causing safety issues (something councillors are not wholly convinced of).
- Councillors considered looking in more detail at the issue with a view to putting down parking restrictions on St Ann’s Road North (e.g. double yellow lines). For now, we don’t think that’s the best way to go. The investigations would be expensive and more lines would most likely just move the parked cars around. For example, as the pavements are being relaid at the moment, the cars have moved to park on the other side of the road.
- There’s a separate issue of cars speeding through the chicanes resulting in regular accidents. Officers are looking into additional signs and lines around the chicanes to improve that.
So we’re still in the position of having no easy solution, and as the business park expands it’s reasonable to assume the problem’s going to get worse before it gets better.
We always have the option of looking again at putting down parking restrictions. Another option might be to lock the pedestrian entrance from St. Ann’s Road North onto the business park (depending on whether or not it’s a public right of way).
My own view is that the long term option has to involve moving cars away from the site by expanding the shuttle bus and public transport provision, and perhaps also offering a “park and cycle” option – perhaps with additional car parks a mile or two away.
Re. the chicanes….in my view, one of the silliest road “safety” ideas ever devised. Deliberately putting traffic in the path of oncoming vehicles is almost asking for an accident to happen. At least Stockport is not as silly as Manchester which puts them in the most ludicrous of locations.
Have noticed there is some work being done to this specific area at the moment, pushing the cars back into parking in the cycle path area of the chicane’s, thank you for my near death experience this morning!
Density forces people and people’s facilities closer together. It was always clear that each business would need its own subsidiary spaces. I notice that more houses are to be built in the area – yet more congestion! Planners?
i agree with the last post, too much development allowed with little regard to the traffic created.
Human nature has to betaken into account. If you’ve just finished a 7 hour day at work and then sit in crawling traffic to get away from the work site (i.e. Cheadle Royal roundabouts), you’re going to seek an alternative parking area and route home. If you put down yellow lines it’ll move the problem just a few yards further away, and possibly into the side roads off St Anns Road.This isn’t an easy quick fix problem.
Can you please explain who MUSE is?
A bypass is supposed to remove traffic from local roads. Building houses, business parks and retail units on the said bypass will simply lead to many extra vehicles using the bypass compared to if no houses, business parks or retail units were built.
I would love to know how many vehicles cross the gatley road/kingsway junction now compared to the year before the a34 bypass opened.
I understand some of these developments are probably outside the stockport area, and the ones that aren’t may have been granted planning permission under different councils than we have today, but more needs to be done to protect what little green space we have around the outskirts of gatley and the surrounding areas.
The a34 bypass is great for places like handforth, where I fully understand that it has probably helped take vehicles off the old a34, but for places like cheadle and gatley, and the gatley road/kingsway junction in particular it has made matters worse.
Any additional development at cheadle royal, or any of the many suitable plots of land that still exist on the a34 bypass will lead to more car parking problems and traffic congestion. I also note that sainsburys plans to extend their store will lead to the loss of parking spaces for shoppers, leading to yet more parking problems, certainly at peak shopping times.
As one of the people who works in Cheadle Royal Business Park, and who parks on St. Annes road, I can say this has nothing to do with the amount of parking in the Cheadle Royal park, and everything to do with the fact that it can take over half an hour to get out onto the A34.
The exit from Cheadle Royal Business park is dysfunctional, and is the root cause of this.
Maybe there are too many cars in this area, but it was a council decision to site the business park here, so it is hypocritical to blame the problems on the people who work in the park, who simply take work where the jobs are.
Having worked on Cheadle Royal Business Park for several months now I can say with some certainty that the problem is getting slowly worse. Planning permission has been approved for another building on the site and more occupants are soon to be moving in to buildings that currently stand empty or only partially occupied.
I appreciate the concern of local residents but when it can take up to 30-40 minutes to drive from a building within the business park to the roundabout on the A34 alone, seeking alternative parking arrangements is the only logical choice.
In the interest of attempting to resolve this problem I have started an online petition with Stockport Council to gather support for further investigation in to the matter.
Any signatures that can be acquired would be additional support and you can find the petition online here: http://bit.ly/UKJMLF
Support from local residents to ease the congestion on the roundabout would in turn encourage more traffic to return to parking on the business park instead of local roads.
So what has happened with the parking problem then?
I see that 702 people signed the ePetition which ran from 09/01/2013 to 25/02/2013 but what happened?
The last time I was in the area it looked no different to me.
Hi Jim,
In the last year we’ve improved safety along St Ann’s Road North by putting yellow lines around the chicanes and some improvements are being made to the Cheadle Royal roundabout to help traffic flow a little more easily. We’ve also re-organised the lanes on the northbound approach to the Kingsway/Gatley Road junction to get as many vehicles through it as possible.
Beyond that there are no easy answers (at least, none that anyone’s come up with so far) as the fundamental problem is too many vehicles and too little roadspace to cope with them.
There are many problems with the exit roundabout onto the A34, and it continues to take (on occasions) 30-40 minutes to exit the business park.
Whilst some work has taken place to organise the lanes, i feel there needs to be something that allows the traffic to flow off the business park in the evenings. A solution could be adding part-time traffic lights for rush-hour on the roundabout rather than the current chaos where people put their lives in their hands – particularly those leaving the business park to travel southbound on the A34.
Another solution could be to add an exit directly onto the northbound route of the A34, thus avoiding the roundabout for many users (and easing the roundabout for other road users), albeit I expect this will never happen as MUSE Developments obviously are not interested in this aspect of developing the business park.
Another possibility, which again I accept is unlikely is an additional exit onto one of the other local trunk roads.