Castle Cary chaos says councillor
Parking issues at Castle Cary station are an accident waiting to happen says Cllr Barry O’Leary. The Mendip District Councillor complained to GWR after seeing lines of parked cars on the verge of the A371. Today the car park was full and drivers had parked on the verge outside the station. However as the verge is narrow at that point and the car park is just before a bend in the road, vehicles protrude onto the carriage way. Cars are parked on either side of the car park entrance and this is not a rare occurrence.
Today there were up to 20 cars parked on the verge outside Cary station. Bearing in mind the bend in the road before the station and the fact that rush hour traffic is still travelling in the dark at this time of year, it feels like an accident waiting to happen. Added to which Mr O’Leary notes there is a small section of the car park directly opposite the taxi rank which continues to be fenced off removing 20 spaces
Cllr O’Leary contacted GWR who run the station asking for a response. They told him “This has been raised with the station manager and they are aware of the situation.“
Cllr O’Leary does not accept that this is good enough. He told The Leveller: “What we need is safety today not safety tomorrow”. He believes the problems are a result of GWR failing to think through their station improvements. These are now running 2 years late. He adds: “So when they make the claim of improvements by summer, I am left asking “which summer?”
Meanwhile Network Rail have put up signs in the car park which suggest they may not have correctly identified where Somerset is:
I came to Somerset in 2014 – & Castle Cary station has been supposedly building extra parking since then. It’s only got worse & worse – so I would not dare use the train in case of no parking. With all the additional houses under construction in Wells & Shepton this HAS to be prioritised – along with a sensible pre booking scheme for spaces linked to travel tickets.
And since Castle Cary is the ‘local’ station for Shepton & Wells some sort of bus service also needs to be implemented. The cost of taxis is prohibitive. Of course, a local branch line reinstated would be a huge benefit. Hoping all this is a Somerset CC priority.
Oh – and in the hope the Council reads this – Resolver the free online service works magic on customer complaints where no other method works. The clout of Somerset CC AND Resolver might possibly get through to GWR. I’m assuming the station master has little or nothing to do with the parking issue.
I think that some (but not many) parking tickets have been issued – would matters be improved by having a daily ticket patrol? A “take away” service for offenders would be good, but this would probably be difficult to lay on before the larger station car park is ready.