Rathbone Road - Liverpool City Council

The Issue

Liverpool City Council (LCC) identified the residential area of Rathbone Road as a hot-spot for pavement parking in 2003. With no access to off-street parking, residents living on the eastern side of the road parked partly or wholly on the pavement, despite the marking of waiting restrictions in the form of yellow lines. As a result, pedestrian access to the pavement was severely restricted, whilst traffic safety concerns were also raised as LCC Traffic Management Engineer Jamie Povalll describes:

"The parking of vehicles on the pavement in Rathbone Road was clearly causing road traffic hazards: space on the pavement was substantially reduced and drivers' views of the road were impaired"

Consultation

Having found that the parking of vehicles on the pavement in Rathbone Road was due largely to the habits of local car owning residents, LCC held a series of open meetings with residents to discuss possible solutions to the issue.

The Solution

After consulting with the residents of Rathbone Road, LCC took the approach of converting part of the footway into hard standing parking bays, identifying this as a solution that would solve the problems caused by pavement parking and meet the parking needs of local residents. In June 2003, LCC introduced an experimental Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) to this effect. When creating the new pavement parking bays, LCC followed the guidelines below:

• Areas of the pavement covering Statutory Undertakers apparatus were deemed as being unsuitable for pavement parking due to the risk of damage to the Statutory Undertakers apparatus
• A minimum pavement width of 1.5m was left for pedestrians, not including a minimum of 1m width of the pavement needed for clearance from opening/closing car doors
• Parking bays were designed to be 6m in length and 2m in width to accommodate a single vehicle
• Areas of the pavement covered with bitmap material were converted into pavement parking bays because this surface was deemed as being suitable for sustaining vehicle weight
• Parts of the pavement made up of concrete paving flags were deemed unsuitable for parking bays as they would begin to break under the pressure of vehicle weight
• Kerb heights in areas of the road adjacent to the parking bays were no more than 100mm so as to reduce the risk of vehicles incurring damage when moving onto the kerb

Signage

LCC use Regulatory Signs 668.1 and 668.2 to identify the pavement parking ban zone in Rathbone Road. These signs can be viewed on the DfT website by selecting the link below.

Regulatory Signs 668.1 and 668.2

The Outcome

As a result of the measures taken in Rathbone Road, residents are able to park their cars near to their homes without causing road safety hazards or restricting pedestrian access to the pavement. The original TRO that had been put in place for a six-month experimental period was later established on a permanent basis with the support of the residents in Rathbone Road. LCC Traffic Management Engineer Jamie Povall clearly believes that the pavement parking problems identified in Rathbone Road have been resolved as a result of the action taken by LCC:

"As a result of the measures introduced in Rathbone Road, we have reduced the risk of traffic safety hazards from parked vehicles and at the same time, we have been successful in meeting the parking needs of local residents"

More information

For more information on the measures taken by LCC to manage pavement parking in Rathbone Road contact Jamie Povall: Jamie.Povall@liverpool.gov.uk .