Turning station car parks into housing?

[librarianallen]

I was at Kemble yesterday to see Mayflower. A huge new car park was opened a few years ago by HRH Princess Anne. On opening the car park, Princess Anne confidently predicted that she would be back in another two or three years to open a further car park in neighbouring fields.
However, a local man told me that since Covid, there have never been more than a handful of cars in this new car park, even on weekdays.
Surely this must be a candidate for conversion into housing?

 

[Wolfie]

Once again it’s parochial Khan actively sticking his middle finger up at “outsiders”.

Hmmmm... Take a look at the terms of HMG's CV bailout of TfL which demand significant income generation. Probably doesn't fit your agenda though.

A principal reason why local residents object to this sort of thing is the recent decision allowing such properties to be built without car parking provision. But there's no control over whether those living there actually own cars. So they have them, and they spill out onto the neighbouring streets inconveniencing everyone else. Sure you can introduce a residents' parking scheme, which themselves are a nuisance for costs and difficulties for your visitors, but those in the new apartments would themselves qualify for parking permits on their adjacent streets.

My house was built in 2001 as part of a development with limited resident parking provision. That was part of the planning permission. The local streets fall within a parking permit area. London Borough of Islington made it clear that no resident of the development would be entitled to buy a permit for that area. To this day that remains so. Hence your last sentence is plain wrong.

Sorry, I expressed it unclearly. The people who are barred from being able to apply for parking permits are those who live in flats that have been built recently, and which had as a condition of their planning permission either:

• They had to have a car parking space constructed at the same time - but not necessarily allocated to the person in the flat
• The flat was designated as car-free, and so the occupants could have no expectation of being able to park a car.

This ban does not apply to people who live in houses or flats that didn't have this condition of planning permission (whether or not they have their own drive or dedicated car park).

The issue arises for the following two groups of people:

• People who are in flats with this planning condition that have a corresponding car park space, but have not rented the actual space from their landlord. This is because some of the landlords ask for more money for the space, and I suspect that some people think they will be able to get away without paying the extra.
• Everyone in the car-free flats - even though they may not be aware that they are in such a flat when they rent.

Here in Wembley, there are some parking restrictions until midnight, because of the stadium.

Getting back to the subject, I think my main point is that from here, it seems that there is increasing acceptance of planning decisions that assume that some people that live in the area will not effectively be able to own a car.

Yup, that is something which has gone on for years.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Might be an idea where there is space to add a deck to part of existing car park, eg double capacity half the land area, but there are numerous issues to do with residential drvelopment: air quality (if there are sidings and trains leave engines running), noise, lack of sufficient amenity space etc. Another issue is that car parks are often used by Network Rail to access the line for maintenance, and reducing road/rail access points will simply cause more disruption to the network, as travel times for pw gangs increased.

This is already a thing.

 

[ScotGG]

Some responses assume removing all parking which of course wouldn't be wise.

Rather, say there's a large 500 space car park in a town, reduce to 400 and build homes on the space freed.

Double decking or multi storey is another idea for remaining space.

The argument that homes near stations isn't desirable just isn't true in many towns and cities. Many people particularly younger people like them. There's not many noise complaints at homes already beside stations as blindingly obvious when moving in. Same with parking permits. Who moves into a place in a city or town and doesn't check? Most people are on the ball.

That also brings us onto parking and car ownerships. Younger people are less likely to drive, and also those who really need more housing space rather than cramped house shares.


That downward trend of driving for younger people was evident before covid.

 

[Gathursty]

You could trial this at Epsom Downs by closing the line and continuing the housing estate through Banstead and Belmont before stopping just short of Sutton.

 

[ScotGG]

Another option of course for NR is to build homes to rent near stations to subsidise the operation of lines. Something along the lines seen abroad.

Closing lines makes no sense given proximity to lines is a major draw to many - though I suspect many older people used to driving for decades fail to realise this.

 

[Meerkat]

It would not be difficult to do this without reducing parking by much by building flats on stilts above the parking. So you could do that now.

Are you allowed to build new housing above public car parks? I thought they had restricted such things due to the risk of car bombs, but I don’t know whether it was blanket or specific (poor people might be ok but flats that important folk might buy arent!)

 

[S&CLER]

Plans have been announced to build homes (I think 36 was the number quoted) on a site between the up side of the Merseyrail Northern Line and the backs of existing houses on Lynton Road at Hillside. Not sure how the residents will react to their currently unobstructed outlooks to the rear being occupied by houses. I've often wondered why the land wasn't offered to them to enlarge their gardens, but no doubt it will be worth more for building plots.

 

[Metal_gee_man]

If you can build up to say 6 or 7 storeys high, use the ground floor for station parking, the 1st floor for limited parking for the flats/maisonettes above with barrier access and then 4 or 5 floors of residential above.
It'd create much needed finance for rail improvements projects and still retain the usability.

 

[AlastairFraser]

As Metal Gee Man says, you don't have to close the car park when you build on it. If we built mid rise housing over most of the single storey station car parks in the UK, we could unlock a lot of cheaper development very convenient for commuting and which provides a lot of money for NR/the TOCs who get an uptake in passenger numbers.

 

[miklcct]

This is the proven profit model used in Hong Kong so I believe it should be copied here. High-rise residential estates should be built around train stations, or even on top of stations if land is not enough, where the money earned is funneled into the railway infrastructure, and the ticket revenue by commuters pays for the operation.