On 1st August 2011 Westminster's cabinet considered a report including a series of parking policy proposals for agreement as part of the Westminster Strategic Parking Review (2010 - 2011). 

The proposals considered and agreed by the cabinet included a policy to review the extent of single yellow lines city-wide and consider their conversion to double yellow lines where appropriate.

Below, you can download the 'delegated authority report' into the conversion of some single yellow lines to double yellow lines in Zones E and G and sub-Zones F3 and F6 (Mayfair, the West End, South Marylebone and South Fitzrovia). This report was agreed on 23rd December 2011. 

The council will now be making the necessary traffic regulation order on 3 January 2012, which will come into operation on 9 January 2012. As per the legal requirements, the statutory notice of these changes will be published on 6 January 2012.

The conversion of single yellow lines to double yellow lines (no waiting “At any time”), where appropriate, would prevent obstruction of the streets by parked vehicles. This would help emergency service vehicles to get around quickly, easily and safely, and also make sure that delivery vehicles can access all streets.

Double yellow lines would also prevent the obstruction of sight lines for drivers and pedestrians and ease traffic congestion, particularly on the approach to junctions and especially those controlled by traffic signals.  At present, some drivers park at the stop line of traffic signals when the single yellow lines apply; this obstructs pedestrian routes at junctions and pedestrian refuges.

The table attached below (Appendix B in the report) shows the total length of available single yellow lines in Zones E and G and sub-Zones F3 and F6, as identified in a comprehensive city-wide parking occupancy survey undertaken between February and May 2011.  This is represented by length and also as parking spaces equivalent. 

The table also shows the length of single yellow lines which will be converted to double yellow lines and the remaining single yellow lines left after that conversion, based on those observed during the parking occupancy survey (some yellow lines were not in use due to construction works).  These are again shown in both metres and parking spaces equivalent. 

It is important to note that the use of parking spaces equivalent is an estimate of the number of vehicles, which could be parked on single yellow lines in the city, either before or after these changes.  A proportion of single yellow line markings are very short in length and so would not be able to accommodate a car length.  It may also be impractical for a vehicle to navigate onto some lengths of single yellow line due to street layouts.  Some lengths of single yellow line would clearly be inappropriate to park on and so are highly unlikely to be used by drivers today.

In order to understand how many vehicles could be parked on any length of single yellow line outside controlled hours, a standard measurement of 4.9metres per vehicle is used. However, this is not a case of simply dividing the total length of single yellow line by 4.9metres, as a proportion of this total length could not be used to provide viable parking spaces (as outlined above).

In the calculations used to create the table in the report, the following considerations have been applied:

• Any length of single yellow line that is less than 4.9m in length is not considered to be a viable parking space and is therefore excluded from the total number of equivalent bays.
• Similarly, for longer lengths of line the number of possible bays is calculated as the number of full size bays that could be accommodated. Therefore, for example, any length of single yellow line up to 9.8m is considered to accommodate only one ‘bay’.
• This calculation has been applied individually to each length of single yellow line and the total number of viable ‘bays’ is the sum of each of these calculations.

The proposals will convert approximately 16% of the single yellow lines to double yellow lines in these zones and sub-zones.  This conversion should not materially impact the capacity of single yellow lines to accommodate the level of vehicles recorded as using the single yellow lines outside of controlled hours in the Colin Buchanan occupancy survey (March – June 2011).

Documents pertaining to the consultation which ran from 14 November 2011 to 02 December 2011 can be viewed here:

Consultation Letter (pdf 56kb)

Statement of Reasons (pdf 10kb)

Notice of Proposals (pdf 80kb)

Draft order (pdf 3,386kb)

E Zone DYL Plan (pdf 23,555kb)

F3 F6 Zone DYL Plan (pdf 27,681kb)

G Zone DYL Plan (pdf 24,462kb)

CPZ map (pdf 436kb)

Westminster City Council made the traffic regulation order on 5 January 2012 converting single yellow lines to double yellow lines in Zones E and G and sub-Zones F3 and F6. It will come into operation on 9 January 2012.  The statutory notice for the traffic regulation order was published on 6 January 2012.

Copies of the traffic regulation order and associated plans are available:

Click here for a copy of the traffic regulation order known as “The City of Westminster (Waiting and Loading Restriction) (Amendment No.3) Order 2012”

There are three sets of plans illustrating the double yellow lines introduced through the traffic order:

E Zone DYL Plan

F3 F6 Zone DYL Plan

G Zone DYL Plan

Notice of Making

Click here to read a copy of the letter from Councillor Lee Rowley (Cabinet Member for Parking and Transportation) explaining the changes to the parking controls.