“ I have a major evidence based concern around the negative effect a reduction in station car parking will cause.
As a resident living just off Mays Lane I see the congestion caused by traffic using this road to avoid driving through Barnet town centre every week day. It gridlocks in both the morning and evening rush hours. That is a statement of fact. To add to the misery, at several points on the newly widened Mays Lane people park (legally) on the roadside thus creating pinch points whereby the road essentially becomes single lane. Please note that this on a road that Barnet Council widened earlier this year at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds to the local tax payers. Add yet more drivers who have been displaced from the station car park and Mays Lane will cease to function as a viable traffic route. Not that traffic will stop using it, simply there will be more stationary traffic, longer travel times and significantly more particulate and noise pollution. At the end of Mays Lane is Underhill descent. Barnet Council currently allow free parking on a two lane road that is also a multiple bus route that again renders the road single lane. As this and the road widening exercise has demonstrated, Barnet Council do not foresee knock on effects of decisions they enact. Evidence shows they do not engage in joined up thinking.
Given my experience of the situations I witness daily I firmly believe that a reduction in station parking will result in catastrophic overcrowding on roads leading to and surrounding High Barnet Station. I have no problem with developing the station. Anyone passing the current land will agree that it's not being put to best use but in the race to see more homes being built the wellbeing, health and quality of life of current residents are being sacrificed. ”