Parking on Open Day
Friday, 14 June 2019
The University is preparing to welcome several thousand visitors to our Whiteknights and London Road campuses for our first Open Days of 2019 on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 June.
We are expecting more than 800 cars each day, and will be reserving car parks 1a, 2, 7, 9 and 10 for visitors to Whiteknights, and Whitegates car park for visitors to London Road.
This means that parking for staff will be extremely limited, with priority given to staff directly supporting on Open Day activities. We are therefore asking all staff who work on the Whiteknights or London Road campuses, and who usually drive, to review their usual travel arrangements for Friday 21 June, and Saturday 22 June as appropriate.
Work from home
Colleagues who usually travel by car, don’t have any meetings planned and are set up to work from home are strongly encouraged to talk to their managers about working from home on Friday 21 June.
Park and Ride service
This year we have been working in collaboration with Reading Borough Council and Reading Buses to promote the Mereoak Park and Ride service to staff and visitors. The Mereoak Park and Ride is just to the south of the M4. There are buses that run regularly during peak hours, stopping at Christchurch Green (near SportsPark). For the Saturday Open Day the park and ride bus will stop on campus. For more information, visit the Sustainability web pages. We hope this is a suitable alternative to driving for those staff who need to come onto campus.
Travel by train with free bus ticket to Whiteknights campus
If colleagues need to come to campus and are able to travel by train, we would strongly encourage you to do so. As an incentive, we are offering all staff free return bus tickets to and from the station on the 21 and 21a. The buses will be operating a term time schedule with buses every eight to ten minutes. Tickets will be available from Whiteknights House reception from Monday 17 June- just pop in and collect your free return ticket.
Car share
For anyone else for whom driving to campus is the only option, there will be parking available for staff in all our halls, on a first come, first served basis on both days. We recommend you arrange to car share wherever possible.
During the Open Days we will of course free up car parking spaces where we can. There will always be parking space in the main campus car parks for members of staff who hold blue badges and need disabled parking spaces.
On Open Day preparations, Professor Robert Van de Noort, Vice-Chancellor, said:
"I am very grateful to everyone across the University who works so hard to make our Open Days so successful. Given the importance of Open Days to our student recruitment plans, we will continue to give priority car parking to our visitors and those staff supporting the events – many of whom will work a very long day. So please plan now for your working arrangements on 21 and 22 June and do not drive to the Whiteknights or London Road campuses unless it is really necessary.”