NICK FELL has spent more than three years surveying the streets of Oxford, making detailed notes and gathering evidence.
But he has not been cataloguing landmark architecture, historic buildings or even significant trees.
Mr Fell, of Ash Grove, Headington, has been measuring the gap between double-yellow lines, examining marked parking bays and even documenting the colour of the paint.
Armed only with the highways engineer’s bible – the traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions Manual – the self-styled “anti-parking tax” campaigner has now compiled a 22-page dossier on lines and signs in 104 streets that he claims are defective.
Now the 37-year-old has presented the dossier, covering the Cowley Road, Iffley Road and Abingdon Road areas, to Oxfordshire County Council, the highways authority, and is demanding action.
County highways engineers told the Oxford Mail they were “wading” through the document and would respond in due course.
Mr Fell, who is currently unemployed, said: “It has been a lot of hard work but it is about fairness. It is a two-way street. They have to get it right.”
His detailed observations include: l Caroline Street – broken discontinuous double-yellow lines, change shade of yellow and the lines also change width at intervals along their length.
l Cumberland Road – double-yellow lines broken at the junction corner with Cowley Road, discontinuous for six shoe lengths.
l Western Road – the end termination bars are missing having been built over by a traffic calming feature.
Mr Fell’s campaign started life in 2006 during the council’s consultation for a Controlled Parking Zone in Headington and a disagreement about the siting of a disabled parking bay.
The zones allow residents’ parking only at certain times.
It prompted Mr Fell to examine the markings close to his home and then he just kept going.
He said: “I wanted to know how far the nonsense extended, the further I went the more I found.”
“The study I have done on East Oxford has taken three years in total.
“It comes down to walking the streets and looking at every single restriction and, if it’s defective, I record it.
“I hate to see people being given penalty charges where the restrictions are defective.”
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