Tuesday 28 July 2020

Changes to Parking Permits from 1st September

From the 1st September residents can only park all day in their own mini zone

Tower Hamlets Council has (just) announced changes to the parking Zone system as described above. 

It is a simple change - from 1st September you can only park in your own mini-zone ALL DAY. Other Zones are limited to three continuous hours - but this will have quite a significant impact on some local car users.


At our recent MEOTRA Zoom meeting a resident brought up the matter of non-residents from other B mini-zones driving into MEOTRA streets every weekday and then jumping on the tube at Mile End Station. An urban Park And Ride if you will.

It was noted that someone from Antill Road drives their Porsche around the corner daily and also someone from Tredegar Road drives their car three short streets too.

Now there may be folk who have limited mobility or carers who make use of this extra parking provision. So I hope allowances are made for those. 

Overall it should lead to a small, but noticeable, decrease in traffic coming into our residential streets.

Monday 27 July 2020

Midnight Wednesday 29th July - Deadline for consultation for Liveable Streets Bow


An annotated map showing possible changes to traffic routing through our streets



This Wednesday 29th July at midnight is the deadline for the Liveable Streets Bow consultation. It is cutting it a bit fine to post your response now via Royal Mail, but you can complete it online by heading over to: https://talk.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lsbow



The form takes a while to fill out. It isn't a Yes/No referendum, but a series of questions about the various aspects of the scheme with a sliding scale where you can indicate how much you support or don't support the various aspects. You can also suggest other options or detail your reasoning.

The Mayor, councillors and consultants are keen to say "The proposals aren't written in stone" so let them know your thoughts.

You do have to register (this will help reduce unfair bias from any one lobby group). So do allow a little extra time for this (I would say 15 minutes for the whole response?).

For a reasonable article giving the pro- and anti- viewpoints the Roman Road website has a balanced article including the "The Only Way is Bow" video that I strangely have a soft spot for.



Just over a week ago, we held an online Zoom meeting for MEOTRA residents giving them a chance to hear directly from our councillors the reasons for proposing the scheme and then from the consultants on the nitty-gritty of the design options. We then had a lengthy Q and A where everyone had a chance to quiz the panel.

There was a range of views from the ~40 residents who joined in. The meeting was pleasant and it was good for some of the deep-shielders to see and chat with their friends and neighbours whom they hadn't seen since March.  It wasn't the Online Quiz other RAs have had, but thanks to everyone for joining in.



A car-shaped word cloud shaped from Bow street names
A Streetcar not Named MEOTRA

In the lead up to the meeting, the Zoom address was passed on to non-residents (even though invites expressly asked residents not to do this as Zoom has a capacity limit) and this led to quite a bit of stress as MEOTRA committee members couldn't get into their own meeting that they had paid to put on! We had over a hundred try to gatecrash from the streets above.

So whether you are rich or poor, driver, cyclist or neither, born and bred or only just unpacking your moving boxes; the survey is for everyone: pour a cuppa or something stronger if you prefer and let the council know your thoughts. The more locals that feed in then hopefully the better the final scheme will be.

Deadline Midnight 29th July: https://talk.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lsbow