Rail commuters are to be stopped from parking along a busy street near Didcot Parkway station.

Oxfordshire County Council has vowed to crack down on up to 30 commuters who have been using one side of Cow Lane as a free car park.

The commuters say they are causing no harm blocking one carriageway between Cow Lane Bridge and Evenlode Drive because access to a tunnel beneath the bridge is only open to one-way traffic since the new Hitchcock Way was opened last year.

But council officers say the parked cars are a danger to pedestrians, cyclists and drivers -- especially when commuters turn their cars around to head home.

Jon Cromer, of Sutton Courtenay, who works in Swindon, said: "When I previously used the railway car parks, my car was broken into and damaged."

A Wantage woman, who works for John Lewis in Reading, said: "I see no harm in parking in Cow Lane.

"It used to cost me £3.20 a day to use the station car parks, which I cannot afford.

"I live in Grove Street, Wantage, where people park on the roadside -- I just have to accept it."

The county council has published a temporary traffic order banning waiting at any time along the section of Cow Lane between the bridge and Longford Way, including the junction with Evenlode Drive.

The experimental parking ban will operate for up to 18 months, but could be extended.

David Robertson, the county council's executive member for transport, said: "The parking problems in Cow Lane are of great local concern and we agreed to act quickly to try to stamp them out.

"An experimental order will allow us to do this and see whether this solution will work in the long run or whether it will need to be changed and extended if, for example, parking problems are simply shifted elsewhere."

Mr Robertson said road safety officers would be monitoring neigbouring streets not included in the ban.

Margaret Davies, a district councillor and deputy leader of the town council, who lives in Evenlode Drive, accused commuters who parked in the street rather than the station car park of being cheapskates.

She said: "The section of Cow Lane close to the bridge is a crossing point for five cycleways and footpaths where the view of pedestrians and cyclists crossing the road -- including children -- is obscured by parked cars."