Do lots of lorries really want to park on a Croydon flyover?

I’m never really sure about the format of this blog.  Most things I write attempt to have some structure but this blog in just endless freeform waffle.  A sort of stream of semi-consciousness.  It deals with no important issues, it reaches no radical conclusions, it isn’t particularly funny and makes no great impression in the world.  

Today’s unimportant issue is that of the new parking spaces for lorries on the flyover parallel to the Whitgift Centre.  Croydon being an architectural dumping ground of concrete and tarmac that other towns wouldn’t put up with has 3 flyovers and an underpass.  So for clarity this is the one that goes north from Reeves Corner past Centrale-way and then heads off northwards.

Up until a couple of weeks ago this flyover had three lanes in each direction.  Now it has two and lots of parking places interspersed with chevrons.  Not quite understanding why I decided to park in one.  It occurred to me that this was probably not very safe since traffic is whizzing past at 40 mph on the drivers side so I had to wait for a gap in the traffic to open the door and rush out before I got run over.

Near to where I parked there was a sign telling me that if I parked there I should alight from the passenger side door as it is for authorised vehicles only.   

How one gets authorisation I don’t know.  I suppose one rings the Council and is then told to use their unusable website.  A sign further back seems to suggest they are for trucks and the most reasonable sounding answer I could get from anyone asking around is that they are “for trucks waiting for the town centre”.  

But why should any trucks be “waiting for the town centre”? 

Makee-no-sensee. 

Who on earth wants to park on Croydon flyover? 

Then I thought perhaps I am being cynical but I have now passed that way many times at many different times of day and I never see anyone parked in them.  So what are they for?

After much conspiracy theorising the first answer I came up with is that this is a thinly veiled excuse to make the road narrower and slow down cars.  After all a duel carriageway where one can do 40 doesn’t fit with Croydon’s 20’s plenty for people with no urgency mantra. But can it be more complex that that?  Let’s ask the question again.  Why would trucks be waiting for the town centre? 

I came up with two possible answers. 

1 When the Whitgift Centre is pulled down by Hammerwhatsit/Westfield to build their new tower blocks and shops then there will be a lot of building trucks bringing steel and concrete and taking away concrete and steel.

2 When Brexit happens and we’re thrown out the EU on WTO rules and the trucks are backed up from Dover to London trucks will need more places to pull over.  Could this be a piece of post-Brexit contingency planning?

In the mean time they remain conspicuously empty and the only person I have ever seen being foolish enough to park in them has been me.  Maybe nobody has been “authorised” yet?  I wonder if they ever will be?

If you too have a conspiracy theory to explain these parking spaces and white lines that are at both ends of the flyover ... probably best to keep it to yourself in case people think you're not all there.