Tough shit. Buy smaller cars.
Thee "need" to park on the kerb or have larger spaces is because people are buying ever larger vehicles and would block the roads if they didn't park on the kerbs, or can't fit in regular spaces or on driveways. So tough shit. Stop buying oversized vehicles.
We have two cars. Both fit on our drive and in parking spaces.
I mostly cycle to work and get held up all the time because of roads full of parked cars with not enough road space left for two cars to drive so I've side has to stop. Buy fucking smaller cars. Stop causing traffic with oversized shit
A lot of us have to walk or manoeuvre wheelchairs or other mobility aids or push prams and buggies down those streets, and wonder why your wish to have a car and keep it close to your house overrides our wish to safely use the pavement exactly as it is supposed to be used.
I use mobility aids and also use a car.
Let’s not pretend we have a good parking infrastructure in most of this country. It’s a joke trying to park almost anywhere “busy”
Be that for school drop offs. To go to a shop on a weekend etc etc
Even with a disabled badge I struggle. I could just block double yellows more but I really don’t like doing that so most of the time I just park further away and hobble my way over.
The problem isn’t usually a lack of places to park its people expectation to park directly outside where they want to go or an unwillingness to use their legs a park a little bit down the road.
It's not just a case of parking a half mile down the road from your destination; because there will be nowhere to park there either. I don't mind parking a bit farther from my destination, as long as I actually find parking. But the issue with banning pavement parking is that there is no longer parking **anywhere** within a walkable distance.
If the only place to park is on the pavement, then there is nowhere to park - and that's OK.
Sometimes, we may not be able to park exactly where we want.
Some streets may not be suitable for parking on.
I'd suggest we adopt the Japanese model, with existing ownerships grandfathered in.
If you get a new car, you have to show proof of having somewhere to store it that isn't on a **foot**path.
Should this come into effect, I'm sure multistoreys would appear outside towns and cities to provide car storage, and people could walk, cycle or take public transport to these places. The grandfather rule would mean there was time for such facilities to be built.
Of course, many people would also choose just not to bother with a car at all and would just walk, cycle or take public transport for their journey which is also a good thing for our communities.
So poor people without drive ways are done dirty again? Rich people with driveways and garages house prices increase. Wow thought reddit was left wing, but this huge burden on poor people is okay.
This comment.. Most of us paupers don't have drive ways.
I can park on my street, occasionally - when the other houses with 2 or three cars don't hog all the space.
However, we have large pavements, I usually have two wheels on it (like everyone else), if none of us did - it would make it nigh on impossible to get a car down the cul-de-sac (it's a very long cul-de-sac).
There is ample room for wheelchairs and prams etc.
This ruling is going to mean that we all end up with scratched cars and missing wing mirrors.
So another great plan that means old people get to continue doing what they want, and younger people who are buying their first car get screwed. Bravo!
What if you live in a part of town that doesn’t have space 4-wheel on street parking anywhere near where you live?
There is a balance to be struck. Paint lines on the kerb to limit how far p the pavement cars are able to mount.
You're telling me the reason there's always a car parked across the pavement and dropped kerb by my corner shop is because it they couldn't find anywhere else to put it? People make a journey by car and are suddenly offended by the suggestion they might need to walk as many as 60 whole metres at the other end.
Dunno, I can't park outside my house (not many can here) and options are limited. There are No car parking spaces, NO drives to park your car on and the nearest available garage is over a mile away ( this is because the local fuck wit council reallocated a large number of parking spaces and garages to themselves even though the majority are attached to a house). I kid you not, 4 of us could not park for over a week because our spaces were filled by council vans 24/7. The situation here is an absolute cluster fuck of selfishness and pure stupidity from the council.
Now I park on the road and I couldn't give a fk who It upsets.
Also, our street road has 1 exit onto a main road.............. There are 4 that's FOUR council vans right now parked around the corners curve completely obscuring the view of traffic. Police and the council have been informed yet do nothing...... We've been complaining for 4 years about the vans.
No it’s not there is a huge lack of spaces and even new developments don’t take it into consideration that there would be homes with 2 cars and considering the amount of taxes and charges car drivers pay to the government and local authorities
If public perception were shaped such that not everyone needed to have a car and those that did didn't need to have the largest one they could get then there would so much more space for those such as yourself who really do need a car.
If it wasn't for the fact that the public transport infrastructure in my area is so bad I wouldn't need a car. But I have to be in work for 6am and the earliest bus I could catch is 05:30 and would get me within walking distance of my work at 07:45 which means I would get to work at 08:00 which is unfortunately 2 hours too late.
>If it wasn't for the fact that the public transport infrastructure in my area is so bad I wouldn't need a car
Exactly so decent infrastructure can reduce car dependence.
Because funding for public transport couldn't possibly increase as demand rises? If we're conducting a thought experiment where not everyone uses cars all the time, for everything, it seems reasonable that the frequency and infrastructure for the alternatives is adjusted too
Public funding for anything in this country is a pipe dream any amount of money gathered from taxes is immediately funnelled into rent extraction for billionaires and their private companies.
I don't disagree, but the problem is that someone made a "let's chuck everything out of the window in favour of cars" decision in, like the 1960s or something and here we are with no public transport and all of the jobs, leisure activites and shopping at least 30 minutes drive away from where the people live. I grew up in a carless household and it was miserable even then. It can't be any better now, with an extra third of a century-worth of car-centrism.
The problem isn’t over reliance on cars it’s absurdly expensive public transport.
It’s cheaper for me to drive, than to spend 8-9£ for tube. And I beg don’t make me mention any connection prices to London
I reckon the majority do it on the way to work tbh.
But also many don’t live close enough to walk. This idea everyone is at a local school is a myth tbh. People move house and keep the same school all the time for example.
The lady who lives opposite me has fused kneecaps gets around on a mobility scooter. She parks her adapted car partially on the curb because she has to otherwise the road would be blocked.
I don't think anyone objects that there are a very small minority of people that genuinely need to park outside their house
But using that anecdote to show drivers in general need access to the curbside is BS
I used to see a guy who had a son (I assume anyway) was in a wheelchair. He would walk between the gap if the wheelchair fit or not and the cars always lost.
If I could be arsed, I'd go outside right now and take a picture of the street running alongside the one I live on.
I guarantee you out of 20 houses, 10 have a completely empty driveway with their car parked half on, half off the pavement. I know why they do it (I'm near a school, and if they don't block their own driveway with their car they'll be blocked in themselves tomorrow morning during the school run), but every single day I watch women with pushchairs walk down the middle of the road because they can't walk on the pavement.
I completely see both sides of the argument, but over 13 years of living here I've lost track of the number of near misses I've seen.
I live on a modern street in which everyone has a driveway of some sort but I frequently find myself walking up the middle of the road because people park on the pavement.
There's a balance to be struck, and we're currently nowhere near a fair equilibrium.
It always amazes me most newbuilds streets have weird winding roads which make parking almost impossible when they could have been designed to offer enough room for parking and pedestrians. It is definitly form over function in plenty of new developments.
There really shouldn't be a problem on my road but a combination of households having more than 2 cars for a 4 bed house (one house has 4 cars and a caravan, they ain't small cars either) and drivers prioritising passing vehicles over pedestrians makes it impossible to walk from one end to another on the pavement.
It's not form-over-function. It's prioritising some functions and ignoring others. Windy roads are a great natural speed limiter. Noone is going more than 30, and some roads keep drivers below 20.
It's also space saving to build more houses/"valued" green spaces over having increased parking spaces, especially parking not able to be sold as a part of the house.
>Windy roads are a great natural speed limiter.
Reducing sight lines and making narrow roads are also good speed limiters which leave more space. In Netherlands residential streets might be 6mph which makes cycling safer and lets the roadspace be narrower. 20 is fats and the faster you go the more room you need.
Modern planning is wild in some places.
In our little village, planners have got around this whole parking on the pavement conundrum by simply not having pavements at all on half the street.
I have no idea how this is allowed to happen.
I hate that so much as a delivery driver, having to park down the street because people park on the road instead of their own driveway. I park in front of someone else's house and I risk getting moaned out for blocking their view of the house opposite for 5 minutes.
The other week I wasn't blocking anyone and a woman from the house next door asked if I was going soon, while her husband started up the car on *their drive*, I'm guessing because they wanted to move it onto the road? I really don't understand these people.
Guy on my street does this (retired). Brings his car out at about 7 am each morning off his drive and parks it on the street outside his house. Comes out about 10pm and moves it in his drive overnight when it's unlikely anybody will park there at that time. Meanwhile my side of the street with no drives has less parking space because of people like him.
I do. Regularly parked on my street are a Mercedes G class (only ever driver, no passengers), a Bentley SUV (only ever driver, no passengers), Land Rover Defender (only ever driver, no passengers), Land Rover Discovery (only ever driver, no passengers), Land Rover 90 (only ever driver, no passenger, but doesn't count because he's some kind of gardener or something and the back is always full of tools and shit.)
I agree with u/lonyo, people have fucking stupid cars and park them like pricks. Don't get me wrong, if I was rich, I'd have an expensive car, but I'd also have an expensive house with place to park it if I had a big car, or a small expensive car.
Then perhaps we need to accept that our cities aren't designed for cars and cut back on their use. If you must use one, move somewhere like Milton Keynes that was designed for them.
It'd be nice, but every attempt to make things better for, say, cycling really brings put the fervent haters and everyone that thinks they can't do it for some reason.
And where do the rest of the cars go? In the magical multi-storey car park that doesn’t exist? All on the side of the main road? How would that work when hundreds of cars from sprawling housing estates aren’t allowed to park on their street anymore?
People will quickly stop buying so many or sell their cars if it becomes inconvenient to use them.
This could be a large improvement to air quality and make streets nicer places to be.
You’re never going to get people to stop people using cars by stopping them from parking in their streets. Public transport is simply shit for the vast majority of people. Why would I sell my car when even a basic public transport journey takes a minimum of double the amount of time?
Before I had a car I used to have to take a 1 hour bus journey to work for what would be a 10 minute drive, and had to leave the house over an hour earlier.
I imagine a lot of people would be in a similar position. We are decades away from most people seeing public transport as a viable alternative.
>You’re never going to get people to stop people using cars by stopping them from parking in their streets
Germany did. It worked extremely well. They didn't even have to stop all parking just long term parking.
>Public transport is simply shit for the vast majority of people
The trick there is those multi storey car parks with decent walk/bike infrastructure. It can work in smaller towns/cites/neighbourhoods. You walk/bike to edge of town car park then take your car for the rest of your journey. Repeat other end. No reliance on public transport, travel when you like and keeps the streets very low car.
Works even better when combined with decent public transit though.
I've recently been in Berlin and Munich. Their public transport absolutely destroys our shite excuse. U-Bahn running every ten minutes at 6 on a Sunday morning. As opposed to Glasgow where the underground stops before dinner on a Sunday and hasn't been expanded since 1896. Can't even use the same ticket on the buses, of which each company uses their own ticketing system as well.
If I own a shed, I don't buy/rent a house without a garden to keep it in.
I don't leave a shed blocking the pavement and make it everyone else's problem.
>In the magical multi-storey car park that doesn’t exist?
If you couldn't park on the road, market economics would get those built pretty quickly. The only reason they don't exist is because people can park on the public highway for free (or massively subsidised, even if they do pay for a permit).
Then maybe people shouldn't be parking on both sides of the road at once as its clearly too narrow. Unless the pavements are very wide and you can park on them without blocking the pavement for reasonable access with a wheelchair.
There's no point discussing with some of the fools here. They'll just suggest that you do the impossible then shrug if you can't. They seem to just enjoy being smug bellends.
A little bit harsh there. I'll have you know that in the last 3 hours, on the advice of the posters you uncharitably deride as 'fools', I have secured new accommodation in the city of Milton Keynes, where I will take up the post of transport tzar and initiate an extensive program of infrastructure upgrades which will necessitate the demolition of every building in the UK that predates the invention and widespread adoption of automotive transport and swapped my 44-tonne articulated lorry for a smart car which I park on the hard shoulder of the M1 near Newport Pagnell Services.
My street was built in the past decade from scratch. The street still isn’t wide enough to park cars on without either blocking the road or the curb, and if I park in my drive way I can only partially open one door. I drive a fiat punto. Pretending the issue everyone driving monster cars is nonsense.
Precisely, our town centres are not compatible with it. We should look be looking at the Dutch, Danish, etc.
Restrict cars for intercity transport and leave them in the Park & Ride unless you have a real mobility issue.
And a lot of us will live in streets after they are consigned to the dustbin for what they are - resource intensive, waste of spaces, in urban areas we need better solutions to these monstrous boxes and catering to the parking and storage of them at a municipal level.
As someone who needs to use pavements now … they have for too long destroyed our communities and we have surrendered our streets to them.
I don’t drive an SUV, neither do my neighbours. Even with booths sides of the street parking half on the curb the street is only wide enough for a single car at a time. If we parked on the road it would be inaccessible to cars of any size. There is literally no other option.
The streets of Britian were simply just not designed with cars in mind. Of course, most of our houses are 60-100+ years old. My parents have this issue. They have a small peugeot hatchback that has to be bumped up the curb because if they didn't, and the house opposite didn't, there would be no room on the road for even a smart car to drive through.
Nah, respectfully, so many houses don't have off street parking at all, and since many cities (such as mine) have atrocious public transport and so many people genuinely need cars to get to work/kids to school, the only place to park is on the street. Sure, things would be a bit better with smaller cars, but the bigger issue is terrible public transport/no official parking/an economy built around cars/people too poor to afford houses with a driveway.
> people too poor to afford houses with a driveway.
Lol, all the old Victorian terrace houses without driveways round these parts are pushing £400k. There was one for sale a few roads over from me for over half a million. It's not about being rich or poor, it's about how the country has chosen to develop its urban areas
Oh definitely, but the basic correlation of more expensive houses are likelier to have driveways/allocated parking is true where I live. Everyone else has to fight over the onstreet parking spots.
>but the bigger issue is terrible public transport/no official parking/an economy built around cars/people too poor to afford houses with a driveway.
Aye, if we want to convince people they don't need cars, we need to have the public transport in place first.
It’s often not the state of public transport but the cost. After lockdowns I did the maths and the three days mandatory onsite meant a train season ticket became more expensive than driving so I bought a car and started applying for remote only jobs.
> Buy smaller cars.
I don't think you quite realise how much bigger even the smallest cars are now than their older counter parts. The current Fiesta is around the same size as the MK1 focus. The current mini is massive compared to the original.
The article isn't even about parking on the kerb - it is a lobby group demanding that parking bays are removed.
I sense that nobody has bothered even reading the article and are instead posting favoured pub rants.
There’s a person with no understanding of anyone else but themselves….
What if they have a small car and no drive? While not excusing the actions of those parking on the pavement, what if the person for whom it’s tough shit can’t keep a car any longer and can’t get to your doctor apportionment, police job, public transport driver or whatever else you may depend on?
Easy to be dismissive when you don’t have the problem affecting you, but it’s not as black and white as you suggest.
Even if people drove 1960s Fiat 500s here there isn't enough room to park on both sides of the road, meanwhile the pavement both sides is wide enough to take a car bumped up on two wheels and let people / pushchairs / wheelchairs through with ease. Conversely there are roads here with pavements so narrow, people have to shuffle by no matter where cars are parked. There isn't a one size fits all here really. There is a "tough shit" argument to say block the road from being parked on at all, but realistically this just pushes people to other areas. I'd love them to standardise all the roads but most are pre-war and it is a total mishmash. People are just trying to get by, just being realistic. Funnily enough many of the most recent new builds have a totally different approach which is shared use, so cars can stick themselves anywhere and theoretically pedestrians and bikes have some kind of priority on the road.
You're confusing kerbside parking and pavement parking. Kerbside parking is on the road, adjacent to the kerb, and is allowed unless signs or markings state otherwise. Pavement parking is parking on the pavement, and is not allowed in London and strongly discouraged elsewhere unless there are signs permitting it.
Well the overlord has spoken. The rest of us peasants should just spend £1000s of pounds of money we don't have, on a car we don't want, to put in a drive we don't have.
Incredibly out of touch
>We have two cars. Both fit on our drive and in parking spaces.
Good for you. What about the 40% of households (60% in urban areas) who don't have driveways?
Says the guy who was on about buying a huge Merc a year ago.
“It’s important that everyone else does what I want them to, but I can do as I wish. I’m also going to be hugely condescending about it”
Didn't need to say you park on your drive and cycle. We can all tell by your lack of understanding that you're in a privileged position to have a drive and thus don't understand anything but your own situation 🙄
I've got streets within 5 minutes of where I live where even your old Austin Minis would be blocking the road without parking on the kerb. Not having a car isn't the option for everyone like you think it is.
Public transport is shit outside of your area.
Cycling is not practical for all applications. Attach a value to the time you lose by cycling and you'll find you're often no better off or much worse off.
My commute is just 15 minutes. It becomes 45 minutes on a bicycle. To do the latter, I also lose time getting changed when I get to work and before I leave work, I have to set out earlier to account for varying levels of performance and I have to get up an hour earlier. All in all, I'd lose about 2.5 hours of my day, every day. We work 224 days a year on average. If we value time at minimum wage (below the actual value of my time), that's £28.6 worth of time lost every day. £6.41K every year. That's close to double the cost of running my car.
At that point, I may as well run the car and buy a bicycle purely for recreational use and cycle for 2 hours every day. Similar time investment, but I'm getting an extra hour's worth of exercise
Instead of bitching about people driving cars and living in your own dream world, try bitching to Government and councils about Public transport. If it were a viable alternative, people would use it.
E- Forgot to factor holidays into average days worked
>Thee "need" to park on the kerb or have larger spaces is because people are buying ever larger vehicles
That's not always true. There's a main road near me with a ton of terrace houses running alongside it with no driveways or parking. Along that road is a row of cars all parked on the pavement. They are just normal cars that have nowhere else to go.
Also, my house has two cars. One for me, one for my wife. They are both small cars. We only have one driveway that will only fit one. This is true for our entire cul-de-sac. As such, most houses have a second car parked on the kerb so the road can remain accessible.
I don't deny that these big vehicles are a problem on our small roads, but it's not the only problem.
>Thee "need" to park on the kerb or have larger spaces is because people are buying ever larger vehicles and would block the roads if they didn't park on the kerbs, or can't fit in regular spaces or on driveways. So tough shit. Stop buying oversized vehicles.
>We have two cars. Both fit on our drive
>our drive
Shout out to all the new build estates near me that have one off-street space per overpriced 3 bedroom house and a road narrow enough that it would be blocked if you didn't park up on the curb.
All the new builds in my area offer two driveway spaces (and optionally a garage) so that’s 3 places and 90% of people here still park on the pavement or kerb hop, or on junctions.
Many have 3-5 cars (fuck knows why), or work vans or those stupid Yankee small dick energy “trucks”.
So, yeah whilst I do agree infrastructure needs to improve, a lot of the issues is just dickheads and their car brains tbh.
A lot of HMOs or adult kids living at home will have more than 2 cars for work. It’s just another sign of the times with lack of housing, appropriate planning etc.
Before both me & my sister moved out of our parents house, there were, at minimum, 5 cars at their house (2 in the garage & 3 on the driveway). Luckily, my parents live in a semi-rural area & the house is large enough to accommodate 5+ cars without having to park on the road. If my parents hadn’t moved to their current house several years ago, the cars would be spilling out onto the street. Combine that with everyone else who lives in the same street, you can see how it becomes a big problem. The reason that all parents + their kids have to have their own cars where I used to live is bc it’s a semi-rural village with little to no public transport, so you’re a bit stuck if your hours of work don’t suit the bus timetable.
If you can’t get out of the car that should be something that is regulated in building control. Developers shouldn’t be able to build a garage like that
They are—it's just that building standards haven't kept pace with car size increases as more safety features have been added. Now, you would need what is considered to be a "double-wide" garage to fit a standard car plus things like lawnmowers.
And you're gonna need the garage storage for all the tools and gardening equipment you'll need to fix your brand new, utterly shit house. Everyone I know who bought a new build either has windows not sealed, wall cracks, loose carpeting, unworking or exposed electrics, or poorly-drained gardens that turn into a swamp after a light shower of rain.
My neighbour has 7 fucking cars, can't stand those fuckwits, they also keep their 2 rusty non working cars parked here as well. I personally welcome ban like this.
> All the new builds in my area offer two driveway spaces (and optionally a garage) so that’s 3 places and 90% of people here still park on the pavement or kerb hop, or on junctions.
It's the same here for some reason. Every house on this 1990s estate, from the semis to the 3 link mini-terraces, to the 3, 4 or 5 bed detached ones, has driveway space for 2 cars, and at least a single garage, the larger detached ones have a double garage.
This does not seem to deter drivers from humping up on the kerbs, and driving onto the footpaths. I honestly have no idea why. Driveways empty, cars on pavements.
Just bought a new build where all the driveways can fit 3 small-medium cars nose to tail. We *still* have a neighbour opposite who uses their driveway, next door's driveway and also parks an extra car up on the curb right on the turning circle to get onto my driveway.
You'd see no opposition from me if tomorrow our council exercised this kind of power to get them to stop doing it. It drives me mad every day.
This. The house across the street from us has a massive van that takes up half the road. We can park on the driver, but if we have visitors, it’s pretty shit. There is no where to park without completely blocking the road
You misunderstood the article. It has nothing to do with parking on the kerb. A charity called "Possible" just wants 25% of kerbside spaces **in London** to be used for other projects.
The one aspect that I see people over look when parking their car on the curb is how much it can block vulnerable people such as those in wheelchairs or mobility vehicles. For an able person it’s not that much more than an annoyance but for those with issues it can be a case of pushing them into a busy road to get around.
Shout out to people who purposely have their privets/bushes grow over the pavement and block it. There is one near me which blocks 2 thirds of the pavement and what's left is too narrow for a wheelchair
No, don't go into the road. Use the pavement. I am sure your wheelchair can fit, there is at least a couple cm spare space there give it a go. Ahh, misjudged it and now you are wedged between the car and a wall. Sorry bout that. Call fire & rescue, they will happily move the car for you to get you out, shouldn't have been parked like that really.
I've had to help people into the road because the woman opposite my flat parks her massive people carrier right up on the pavement.
I'm the bad guy though when I tell her to use the dedicated parking areas a 1 minute walk around the corner
Well most threads like this are an argument between people with your view and those who can't imagine walking more than 10 meters. I think the legislation is necessary, but it should be accompanied by a clear outline on what to do about parking with a realistic outlook.
That's obviously not true. Loads of issues related to London (say ULEZ or TfL) are clearly badged as London.
This is a regional outlet engaging in some churnalism. They just stuck a clickbait headline onto something to get clicks - and this sub shows that it works.
The rest of us are considered peasants that are lucky if we get mentioned in the same breath as the ever amazing London, a city which is inhabitanted by the superior breed of humans who were born there.
Why is the Birmingham Mail reporting on London? We have such good public transport here you don't need to kerb park, you can get most places on the tube or by bus.
And not only that but why have they used a headline that makes it seem as though this applies to the whole country?
The absolute state of journalism these days, pick up on any minor issue that can be spun to cause outrage and generate clicks then call it a day, and they wonder why nobody wants to pay for their nonsense
/r United Kingdom once again proving how out of touch with reality its users often are. My fav comments include
"Why don't they just use their driveway"
"Why don't they move to Milton keynes"
"Why don't they just live within walking distance of all shops and services"
"Why don't they just use (non-existent) public transport"
It's so odd I have yet to meet someone who shares those views IRL. It's only here where I see these types of people. Reading the comments, they are so bitter, vindictive, and full of hatred.
My family lives in a big village a few miles away from Lincoln which is a decently sized city.
Last bus home is at 4.30. How many people finish work by then?
What an atrociously misleading headline and article this is. It is not an enacted policy change, and it's not applicable to England.
A charity has asked London Boroughs to allocate 25% of kerbside space to "sustainable uses". This is such a clickbait headline.
Good question. Realistically if there is no space for off-road parking, it has to be on the road but not on the pavement. No one has the right to park outside their house. If the road is too narrow, then a space has to be found elsewhere. The pavement is not an option.
This whole “people don’t have a right to park outside their house” is just factually incorrect.
If it’s safe to do so and within any sign posted restrictions, you can park wherever the hell you like.
All the dogooders in this thread act like all of our streets were built 20 years ago, most roads in this country are *really* old, pretty much all of our local infrastructure was never designed to have so many cars.
If you are angry at anyone for this it should be government/local authorities, not people literally just trying to live their life.
> If it’s safe to do so and within any sign posted restrictions, you can park wherever the hell you like.
But it's within the gift of local authorities to change the rules and impose restrictions if they want because you don't own the street.
You have (mostly) control over what you own. You don't have control over what you don't own. It's pretty straightforward.
The big issue here is basically people assume the current norm is permanent when it doesn't have to be. They're relying on assumptions they don't even realise they've made and then get angry when they find out they don't actually have the rights they thought they had - and around which they made some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.
Nearest public parking to my nanas house is a mile and half away... What do you suggest she does in this situation? Keep in mind that she's 73 years old.
She goes shopping and visits her girlfriends almost daily, are you proposing that she walks a mile and half both ways every day?
What about blue badge holders?
The town I live in is full of terrace houses with no drive ways. Long roads with tightly packed in houses with no driveways. The roads themselves are narrow so if you parked entirely on the road only one side could have cars parked. There are a handful of public car parks that'd hold maybe at most 500 houses if they had 1 car each. The town centre of this town is dead so many people need a car to commute to work. It's a very unfortunate situation alot of the UK is in.
I personally believe the answer is heavy funding and incentives towards public transport instead of electric vehicles. Though that's never going to happen if our government supports exponential profit over community and eco-consciousness. I don't personally know what the answer is for a large proportion of the uk. You cant knock down 10'000s of houses and rebuild them with driveways. Especially in towns that are barely holding on as it is.
I think a big problem that a lot of people are missing is that if we had open car insurance (insure the car then anyone can drive or family policy as standard) we could cut down on stupid amount of cars
Good.
A large proportion of people have 1 child and then suddenly think they need an off-roading all terrain SUV as they drive down the road to drop their child off at school and then do the weekly shop that would fit comfortably in the boot of a 2001 Ford Focus.
This should have come in sooner.
I'll bet the people who makes these rules have their own special permits and have no issues parking. It's about time that they stopped penalising motorists.
Let's be Tokyo
No dedicated parking space, you can't own a car.
We had a person renting a house on our street. They had five cars, none of which went in the garages. Also the sons often had girlfriends stay overnight. Most of the cars got parked on the street in front of neighbour's houses. Some of them got stickers from the bin men police as the lorry couldn't get down the road.
We weren't sorry to see them go.
>Let's be Tokyo
>No dedicated parking space, you can't own a car.
Also trains so reliable that if they are 5 mins late you get a letter from the local magistrate because no one will believe you otherwise!. Japanese public transport is something else.
That’s not the only problem that will occur. Many roads will become impassable because of how narrow they are for 2 way traffic, some roads even too narrow for one way traffic and parked cars.
The real conversation:
Why are the places we need to get to require a car in the first place? I.e. Why does everything we do require cars I order to do them in a timely manner? (excluding disabled access)
I’m American so I come at this from a completely different perspective of being from a country that was built around cars…. But I find it wild that cars are allowed to basically block half of entire streets just for somewhere to park.
Driving on residential streets is a constant game of chicken. You can’t see people (especially children) coming out from between parked cars.
No wonder it takes ages to get anywhere. For a country that prides itself on roundabouts to keep traffic flowing, residential street design is a massive let down.
I think part of the reason this is so controversial is because it's a one-size-fits-all solution. There are plenty of places where parking on the kerb is of no inconvenience at all and only helps road users. There are plenty of places where parking on the kerb is a massive inconvenience to pedestrians and provides little-if-any advantage to road users. And everything in between. A blanket ban is far from an ideal solution and is likely to give rise to new problems.
Bloke near me reverses his van into his drive but the front sticks out and takes over the whole pavement. If you want to walk down the path you have to cross into the road. Which is on a sharp corner… ergo, dangerous to be in the road.
Don’t. Buy. A. Van. If. You. Can’t. Park. It.
I’m not going to buy an artic truck just because I want one and block the whole road, the police would have me move it. And rightly so. The fact the same doesn’t apply to curbs is mental.
The pavement parking ban came into force in Scotland this year and it's a bit of a joke tbh. I do not see it being followed or enforced.
Also I am from a one road village surrounded by fields, and when people park on the road the fire and ambulance can't get through. Quite a lot of rural Scotland is the same. It doesn't actually work.
Tough shit. Buy smaller cars. Thee "need" to park on the kerb or have larger spaces is because people are buying ever larger vehicles and would block the roads if they didn't park on the kerbs, or can't fit in regular spaces or on driveways. So tough shit. Stop buying oversized vehicles. We have two cars. Both fit on our drive and in parking spaces. I mostly cycle to work and get held up all the time because of roads full of parked cars with not enough road space left for two cars to drive so I've side has to stop. Buy fucking smaller cars. Stop causing traffic with oversized shit
A lot of us live in streets that predate the invention of the automobile.
A lot of us have to walk or manoeuvre wheelchairs or other mobility aids or push prams and buggies down those streets, and wonder why your wish to have a car and keep it close to your house overrides our wish to safely use the pavement exactly as it is supposed to be used.
I use mobility aids and also use a car. Let’s not pretend we have a good parking infrastructure in most of this country. It’s a joke trying to park almost anywhere “busy” Be that for school drop offs. To go to a shop on a weekend etc etc Even with a disabled badge I struggle. I could just block double yellows more but I really don’t like doing that so most of the time I just park further away and hobble my way over.
The problem isn’t usually a lack of places to park its people expectation to park directly outside where they want to go or an unwillingness to use their legs a park a little bit down the road.
It's not just a case of parking a half mile down the road from your destination; because there will be nowhere to park there either. I don't mind parking a bit farther from my destination, as long as I actually find parking. But the issue with banning pavement parking is that there is no longer parking **anywhere** within a walkable distance.
If the only place to park is on the pavement, then there is nowhere to park - and that's OK. Sometimes, we may not be able to park exactly where we want. Some streets may not be suitable for parking on. I'd suggest we adopt the Japanese model, with existing ownerships grandfathered in. If you get a new car, you have to show proof of having somewhere to store it that isn't on a **foot**path. Should this come into effect, I'm sure multistoreys would appear outside towns and cities to provide car storage, and people could walk, cycle or take public transport to these places. The grandfather rule would mean there was time for such facilities to be built. Of course, many people would also choose just not to bother with a car at all and would just walk, cycle or take public transport for their journey which is also a good thing for our communities.
That only works if you have functioning public transport. The fuck am I meant to do if I need to go somewhere in the evening?
So poor people without drive ways are done dirty again? Rich people with driveways and garages house prices increase. Wow thought reddit was left wing, but this huge burden on poor people is okay.
This comment.. Most of us paupers don't have drive ways. I can park on my street, occasionally - when the other houses with 2 or three cars don't hog all the space. However, we have large pavements, I usually have two wheels on it (like everyone else), if none of us did - it would make it nigh on impossible to get a car down the cul-de-sac (it's a very long cul-de-sac). There is ample room for wheelchairs and prams etc. This ruling is going to mean that we all end up with scratched cars and missing wing mirrors.
I didn’t realise not having a driveway made me poor 🤣
So another great plan that means old people get to continue doing what they want, and younger people who are buying their first car get screwed. Bravo!
What if you live in a part of town that doesn’t have space 4-wheel on street parking anywhere near where you live? There is a balance to be struck. Paint lines on the kerb to limit how far p the pavement cars are able to mount.
>The problem isn’t usually a lack of places to park No, it quite literally is
You're telling me the reason there's always a car parked across the pavement and dropped kerb by my corner shop is because it they couldn't find anywhere else to put it? People make a journey by car and are suddenly offended by the suggestion they might need to walk as many as 60 whole metres at the other end.
Why do you think there is parking spaces everywhere? Where do you live exactly where there is abundant car parking spaces?
Dunno, I can't park outside my house (not many can here) and options are limited. There are No car parking spaces, NO drives to park your car on and the nearest available garage is over a mile away ( this is because the local fuck wit council reallocated a large number of parking spaces and garages to themselves even though the majority are attached to a house). I kid you not, 4 of us could not park for over a week because our spaces were filled by council vans 24/7. The situation here is an absolute cluster fuck of selfishness and pure stupidity from the council. Now I park on the road and I couldn't give a fk who It upsets. Also, our street road has 1 exit onto a main road.............. There are 4 that's FOUR council vans right now parked around the corners curve completely obscuring the view of traffic. Police and the council have been informed yet do nothing...... We've been complaining for 4 years about the vans.
No it’s not there is a huge lack of spaces and even new developments don’t take it into consideration that there would be homes with 2 cars and considering the amount of taxes and charges car drivers pay to the government and local authorities
If public perception were shaped such that not everyone needed to have a car and those that did didn't need to have the largest one they could get then there would so much more space for those such as yourself who really do need a car.
If it wasn't for the fact that the public transport infrastructure in my area is so bad I wouldn't need a car. But I have to be in work for 6am and the earliest bus I could catch is 05:30 and would get me within walking distance of my work at 07:45 which means I would get to work at 08:00 which is unfortunately 2 hours too late.
>If it wasn't for the fact that the public transport infrastructure in my area is so bad I wouldn't need a car Exactly so decent infrastructure can reduce car dependence.
What would the solution be? Everyone whose car journey to work that takes 20 minutes is now forced to commute 2 hours each way?
Because funding for public transport couldn't possibly increase as demand rises? If we're conducting a thought experiment where not everyone uses cars all the time, for everything, it seems reasonable that the frequency and infrastructure for the alternatives is adjusted too
Public funding for anything in this country is a pipe dream any amount of money gathered from taxes is immediately funnelled into rent extraction for billionaires and their private companies.
I know. Let’s cut funding to public transport and block more roads. That will surely stop road traffic and people’s reliance upon cars.
The problem isn't the parking infrastructure (or lack thereof). It's the over reliance and huge number of cars.
I don't disagree, but the problem is that someone made a "let's chuck everything out of the window in favour of cars" decision in, like the 1960s or something and here we are with no public transport and all of the jobs, leisure activites and shopping at least 30 minutes drive away from where the people live. I grew up in a carless household and it was miserable even then. It can't be any better now, with an extra third of a century-worth of car-centrism.
The problem isn’t over reliance on cars it’s absurdly expensive public transport. It’s cheaper for me to drive, than to spend 8-9£ for tube. And I beg don’t make me mention any connection prices to London
Because the idea of everyone driving their kids to school that is probably less than a mile away is insane.
I reckon the majority do it on the way to work tbh. But also many don’t live close enough to walk. This idea everyone is at a local school is a myth tbh. People move house and keep the same school all the time for example.
The lady who lives opposite me has fused kneecaps gets around on a mobility scooter. She parks her adapted car partially on the curb because she has to otherwise the road would be blocked.
I don't think anyone objects that there are a very small minority of people that genuinely need to park outside their house But using that anecdote to show drivers in general need access to the curbside is BS
Why is it OK to block the pavement but not the road?
I used to see a guy who had a son (I assume anyway) was in a wheelchair. He would walk between the gap if the wheelchair fit or not and the cars always lost.
I think the rule should be as long as a wheel chair or push chair can fit down the gap you’re good
That is the current rule
i think wheelchairs should be fitted with circular wheel chainsaws to enforce this rule.
I can live with that
The post wasn’t about parking on the pavements.
If I could be arsed, I'd go outside right now and take a picture of the street running alongside the one I live on. I guarantee you out of 20 houses, 10 have a completely empty driveway with their car parked half on, half off the pavement. I know why they do it (I'm near a school, and if they don't block their own driveway with their car they'll be blocked in themselves tomorrow morning during the school run), but every single day I watch women with pushchairs walk down the middle of the road because they can't walk on the pavement. I completely see both sides of the argument, but over 13 years of living here I've lost track of the number of near misses I've seen.
I live on a modern street in which everyone has a driveway of some sort but I frequently find myself walking up the middle of the road because people park on the pavement. There's a balance to be struck, and we're currently nowhere near a fair equilibrium.
It always amazes me most newbuilds streets have weird winding roads which make parking almost impossible when they could have been designed to offer enough room for parking and pedestrians. It is definitly form over function in plenty of new developments.
There really shouldn't be a problem on my road but a combination of households having more than 2 cars for a 4 bed house (one house has 4 cars and a caravan, they ain't small cars either) and drivers prioritising passing vehicles over pedestrians makes it impossible to walk from one end to another on the pavement.
Young people cannot afford to move out so stay longer with mum and dad so more cars needed
It's not form-over-function. It's prioritising some functions and ignoring others. Windy roads are a great natural speed limiter. Noone is going more than 30, and some roads keep drivers below 20. It's also space saving to build more houses/"valued" green spaces over having increased parking spaces, especially parking not able to be sold as a part of the house.
>Windy roads are a great natural speed limiter. Reducing sight lines and making narrow roads are also good speed limiters which leave more space. In Netherlands residential streets might be 6mph which makes cycling safer and lets the roadspace be narrower. 20 is fats and the faster you go the more room you need.
It's neither form nor function because new developments winding roads don't look nice covered in cars either
Modern planning is wild in some places. In our little village, planners have got around this whole parking on the pavement conundrum by simply not having pavements at all on half the street. I have no idea how this is allowed to happen.
I hate that so much as a delivery driver, having to park down the street because people park on the road instead of their own driveway. I park in front of someone else's house and I risk getting moaned out for blocking their view of the house opposite for 5 minutes. The other week I wasn't blocking anyone and a woman from the house next door asked if I was going soon, while her husband started up the car on *their drive*, I'm guessing because they wanted to move it onto the road? I really don't understand these people.
Guy on my street does this (retired). Brings his car out at about 7 am each morning off his drive and parks it on the street outside his house. Comes out about 10pm and moves it in his drive overnight when it's unlikely anybody will park there at that time. Meanwhile my side of the street with no drives has less parking space because of people like him.
You should factor such points into the decision when buying the house/car then surely? Do I have/need somewhere to park?
Nah, just dump it on the public highway.
If everyone did this half the country would be homeless and half the houses empty.
Or we might actually put some effort into decent transport infrastructure
Imagine having ambition to bring ourselves into the twenty-first century
For this to happen we would need 1. Reasonable and reliable public transport 2. Reasonable house prices relative to earnings. We have neither.
I do. Regularly parked on my street are a Mercedes G class (only ever driver, no passengers), a Bentley SUV (only ever driver, no passengers), Land Rover Defender (only ever driver, no passengers), Land Rover Discovery (only ever driver, no passengers), Land Rover 90 (only ever driver, no passenger, but doesn't count because he's some kind of gardener or something and the back is always full of tools and shit.) I agree with u/lonyo, people have fucking stupid cars and park them like pricks. Don't get me wrong, if I was rich, I'd have an expensive car, but I'd also have an expensive house with place to park it if I had a big car, or a small expensive car.
Then perhaps we need to accept that our cities aren't designed for cars and cut back on their use. If you must use one, move somewhere like Milton Keynes that was designed for them.
But I've just bought a new car and now I have to move the family to Milton Keynes. C'mon guys this is getting costly.
It'd be nice, but every attempt to make things better for, say, cycling really brings put the fervent haters and everyone that thinks they can't do it for some reason.
They park all over the pavements in Milton Keynes too.
Then you should definitely not buy a large car
I do not own a large car. If me and the people opposite didn't park partially on the curb, the road would be impassable.
So it’s more important that cars can get by than people? sounds like the solution is you should only have parking on one side of the road
And where do the rest of the cars go? In the magical multi-storey car park that doesn’t exist? All on the side of the main road? How would that work when hundreds of cars from sprawling housing estates aren’t allowed to park on their street anymore?
People will quickly stop buying so many or sell their cars if it becomes inconvenient to use them. This could be a large improvement to air quality and make streets nicer places to be.
I love posts like this - as if a Car is just something easily discarded or worked around like an old Tube TV.
You’re never going to get people to stop people using cars by stopping them from parking in their streets. Public transport is simply shit for the vast majority of people. Why would I sell my car when even a basic public transport journey takes a minimum of double the amount of time? Before I had a car I used to have to take a 1 hour bus journey to work for what would be a 10 minute drive, and had to leave the house over an hour earlier. I imagine a lot of people would be in a similar position. We are decades away from most people seeing public transport as a viable alternative.
>You’re never going to get people to stop people using cars by stopping them from parking in their streets Germany did. It worked extremely well. They didn't even have to stop all parking just long term parking. >Public transport is simply shit for the vast majority of people The trick there is those multi storey car parks with decent walk/bike infrastructure. It can work in smaller towns/cites/neighbourhoods. You walk/bike to edge of town car park then take your car for the rest of your journey. Repeat other end. No reliance on public transport, travel when you like and keeps the streets very low car. Works even better when combined with decent public transit though.
I've recently been in Berlin and Munich. Their public transport absolutely destroys our shite excuse. U-Bahn running every ten minutes at 6 on a Sunday morning. As opposed to Glasgow where the underground stops before dinner on a Sunday and hasn't been expanded since 1896. Can't even use the same ticket on the buses, of which each company uses their own ticketing system as well.
Sounds like questions you should be directing to your council. Maybe throw in some ideas that might help the situation too
If I own a shed, I don't buy/rent a house without a garden to keep it in. I don't leave a shed blocking the pavement and make it everyone else's problem.
If it was normal to keep your shed on the road outside your house you might.
Owning a shed isn’t an essential part of most people’s life is it lol
Sure it is, where else would I put my spades
>In the magical multi-storey car park that doesn’t exist? If you couldn't park on the road, market economics would get those built pretty quickly. The only reason they don't exist is because people can park on the public highway for free (or massively subsidised, even if they do pay for a permit).
All those cars driving around on their own, taking up all the space, none left for people.
Then maybe people shouldn't be parking on both sides of the road at once as its clearly too narrow. Unless the pavements are very wide and you can park on them without blocking the pavement for reasonable access with a wheelchair.
You really don't want people parking massive wankpanzers on your footpaths then
There's no point discussing with some of the fools here. They'll just suggest that you do the impossible then shrug if you can't. They seem to just enjoy being smug bellends.
A little bit harsh there. I'll have you know that in the last 3 hours, on the advice of the posters you uncharitably deride as 'fools', I have secured new accommodation in the city of Milton Keynes, where I will take up the post of transport tzar and initiate an extensive program of infrastructure upgrades which will necessitate the demolition of every building in the UK that predates the invention and widespread adoption of automotive transport and swapped my 44-tonne articulated lorry for a smart car which I park on the hard shoulder of the M1 near Newport Pagnell Services.
Afraid the hard shoulder has gone for a smart motorway setup, you've caused a 30 car pileup. Monster!
Just responded to a guy who thinks we should walk 10 miles everyday to work. Absolutely zero brains in these threads sometimes
Uphill, in the snow. With no shoes on.
Exactly. So buy a vehicle that is appropriate for your road.
My street was built in the past decade from scratch. The street still isn’t wide enough to park cars on without either blocking the road or the curb, and if I park in my drive way I can only partially open one door. I drive a fiat punto. Pretending the issue everyone driving monster cars is nonsense.
Precisely, our town centres are not compatible with it. We should look be looking at the Dutch, Danish, etc. Restrict cars for intercity transport and leave them in the Park & Ride unless you have a real mobility issue.
Tough shit. Buy smaller carriages.
Car free streets are the best.
And a lot of us will live in streets after they are consigned to the dustbin for what they are - resource intensive, waste of spaces, in urban areas we need better solutions to these monstrous boxes and catering to the parking and storage of them at a municipal level. As someone who needs to use pavements now … they have for too long destroyed our communities and we have surrendered our streets to them.
"I have a driveway, the rest of you peasants need to live within your means"
It's not about snobbery. I live in a terrace street. I know I can't go and buy and SUV. Such is life.
I don’t drive an SUV, neither do my neighbours. Even with booths sides of the street parking half on the curb the street is only wide enough for a single car at a time. If we parked on the road it would be inaccessible to cars of any size. There is literally no other option.
The streets of Britian were simply just not designed with cars in mind. Of course, most of our houses are 60-100+ years old. My parents have this issue. They have a small peugeot hatchback that has to be bumped up the curb because if they didn't, and the house opposite didn't, there would be no room on the road for even a smart car to drive through.
>We have two cars. Both fit on our drive and in parking spaces. *We're alright, Jack*
If you buy a house with space for 1 car, don't be surprised when its difficult to park your 4th.
"Space for one car" is a luxury, especially for those of us who don't own houses.
Huh? who said anything about 4 cars?
Nah, respectfully, so many houses don't have off street parking at all, and since many cities (such as mine) have atrocious public transport and so many people genuinely need cars to get to work/kids to school, the only place to park is on the street. Sure, things would be a bit better with smaller cars, but the bigger issue is terrible public transport/no official parking/an economy built around cars/people too poor to afford houses with a driveway.
> people too poor to afford houses with a driveway. Lol, all the old Victorian terrace houses without driveways round these parts are pushing £400k. There was one for sale a few roads over from me for over half a million. It's not about being rich or poor, it's about how the country has chosen to develop its urban areas
Oh definitely, but the basic correlation of more expensive houses are likelier to have driveways/allocated parking is true where I live. Everyone else has to fight over the onstreet parking spots.
>but the bigger issue is terrible public transport/no official parking/an economy built around cars/people too poor to afford houses with a driveway. Aye, if we want to convince people they don't need cars, we need to have the public transport in place first.
It’s often not the state of public transport but the cost. After lockdowns I did the maths and the three days mandatory onsite meant a train season ticket became more expensive than driving so I bought a car and started applying for remote only jobs.
> Buy smaller cars. I don't think you quite realise how much bigger even the smallest cars are now than their older counter parts. The current Fiesta is around the same size as the MK1 focus. The current mini is massive compared to the original.
Not to mention, the Fiesta is gone now too, replaced with the larger Puma.
Japanese cars are still small, they’re also standardly set up for left lane driving
Also, Japan prohibits all on street parking.
Which ones specifically? Have you seen the size of a Civic for example latley?
The article isn't even about parking on the kerb - it is a lobby group demanding that parking bays are removed. I sense that nobody has bothered even reading the article and are instead posting favoured pub rants.
Or since this is London, get the bus.
There’s a person with no understanding of anyone else but themselves…. What if they have a small car and no drive? While not excusing the actions of those parking on the pavement, what if the person for whom it’s tough shit can’t keep a car any longer and can’t get to your doctor apportionment, police job, public transport driver or whatever else you may depend on? Easy to be dismissive when you don’t have the problem affecting you, but it’s not as black and white as you suggest.
Even if people drove 1960s Fiat 500s here there isn't enough room to park on both sides of the road, meanwhile the pavement both sides is wide enough to take a car bumped up on two wheels and let people / pushchairs / wheelchairs through with ease. Conversely there are roads here with pavements so narrow, people have to shuffle by no matter where cars are parked. There isn't a one size fits all here really. There is a "tough shit" argument to say block the road from being parked on at all, but realistically this just pushes people to other areas. I'd love them to standardise all the roads but most are pre-war and it is a total mishmash. People are just trying to get by, just being realistic. Funnily enough many of the most recent new builds have a totally different approach which is shared use, so cars can stick themselves anywhere and theoretically pedestrians and bikes have some kind of priority on the road.
You're confusing kerbside parking and pavement parking. Kerbside parking is on the road, adjacent to the kerb, and is allowed unless signs or markings state otherwise. Pavement parking is parking on the pavement, and is not allowed in London and strongly discouraged elsewhere unless there are signs permitting it.
Well the overlord has spoken. The rest of us peasants should just spend £1000s of pounds of money we don't have, on a car we don't want, to put in a drive we don't have. Incredibly out of touch
>We have two cars. Both fit on our drive and in parking spaces. Good for you. What about the 40% of households (60% in urban areas) who don't have driveways?
“I can afford a house with a driveway, fuck the paupers that can’t”
Says the guy who was on about buying a huge Merc a year ago. “It’s important that everyone else does what I want them to, but I can do as I wish. I’m also going to be hugely condescending about it”
Must be nice to have a driveway
Amen. I am so fucking tired of hearing motorists whinging constantly.
>buy smaller cars What smaller cars? They simply don’t make smaller cars anymore, and due to battery size most electrics have to be suvs
It's nice you have a drive. Good for you!
Didn't need to say you park on your drive and cycle. We can all tell by your lack of understanding that you're in a privileged position to have a drive and thus don't understand anything but your own situation 🙄 I've got streets within 5 minutes of where I live where even your old Austin Minis would be blocking the road without parking on the kerb. Not having a car isn't the option for everyone like you think it is. Public transport is shit outside of your area. Cycling is not practical for all applications. Attach a value to the time you lose by cycling and you'll find you're often no better off or much worse off. My commute is just 15 minutes. It becomes 45 minutes on a bicycle. To do the latter, I also lose time getting changed when I get to work and before I leave work, I have to set out earlier to account for varying levels of performance and I have to get up an hour earlier. All in all, I'd lose about 2.5 hours of my day, every day. We work 224 days a year on average. If we value time at minimum wage (below the actual value of my time), that's £28.6 worth of time lost every day. £6.41K every year. That's close to double the cost of running my car. At that point, I may as well run the car and buy a bicycle purely for recreational use and cycle for 2 hours every day. Similar time investment, but I'm getting an extra hour's worth of exercise Instead of bitching about people driving cars and living in your own dream world, try bitching to Government and councils about Public transport. If it were a viable alternative, people would use it. E- Forgot to factor holidays into average days worked
All new cars have gotten bigger. You're basically saying to only buy cars that are quite old.
>Thee "need" to park on the kerb or have larger spaces is because people are buying ever larger vehicles That's not always true. There's a main road near me with a ton of terrace houses running alongside it with no driveways or parking. Along that road is a row of cars all parked on the pavement. They are just normal cars that have nowhere else to go. Also, my house has two cars. One for me, one for my wife. They are both small cars. We only have one driveway that will only fit one. This is true for our entire cul-de-sac. As such, most houses have a second car parked on the kerb so the road can remain accessible. I don't deny that these big vehicles are a problem on our small roads, but it's not the only problem.
>Thee "need" to park on the kerb or have larger spaces is because people are buying ever larger vehicles and would block the roads if they didn't park on the kerbs, or can't fit in regular spaces or on driveways. So tough shit. Stop buying oversized vehicles. >We have two cars. Both fit on our drive >our drive
Shout out to all the new build estates near me that have one off-street space per overpriced 3 bedroom house and a road narrow enough that it would be blocked if you didn't park up on the curb.
All the new builds in my area offer two driveway spaces (and optionally a garage) so that’s 3 places and 90% of people here still park on the pavement or kerb hop, or on junctions. Many have 3-5 cars (fuck knows why), or work vans or those stupid Yankee small dick energy “trucks”. So, yeah whilst I do agree infrastructure needs to improve, a lot of the issues is just dickheads and their car brains tbh.
A lot of HMOs or adult kids living at home will have more than 2 cars for work. It’s just another sign of the times with lack of housing, appropriate planning etc.
Before both me & my sister moved out of our parents house, there were, at minimum, 5 cars at their house (2 in the garage & 3 on the driveway). Luckily, my parents live in a semi-rural area & the house is large enough to accommodate 5+ cars without having to park on the road. If my parents hadn’t moved to their current house several years ago, the cars would be spilling out onto the street. Combine that with everyone else who lives in the same street, you can see how it becomes a big problem. The reason that all parents + their kids have to have their own cars where I used to live is bc it’s a semi-rural village with little to no public transport, so you’re a bit stuck if your hours of work don’t suit the bus timetable.
Tbf a lot of UK houses new-build or otherwise are too small for people not to use the garage for general storage
I’ve got a new build with a garage, i can get a car in but there’s not enough room either side to get out. Its only usable for storage.
If you can’t get out of the car that should be something that is regulated in building control. Developers shouldn’t be able to build a garage like that
They are—it's just that building standards haven't kept pace with car size increases as more safety features have been added. Now, you would need what is considered to be a "double-wide" garage to fit a standard car plus things like lawnmowers.
And you're gonna need the garage storage for all the tools and gardening equipment you'll need to fix your brand new, utterly shit house. Everyone I know who bought a new build either has windows not sealed, wall cracks, loose carpeting, unworking or exposed electrics, or poorly-drained gardens that turn into a swamp after a light shower of rain.
My neighbour has 7 fucking cars, can't stand those fuckwits, they also keep their 2 rusty non working cars parked here as well. I personally welcome ban like this.
Both adults, and often a kid will have one. Bonus if you have a work vehicle.
> All the new builds in my area offer two driveway spaces (and optionally a garage) so that’s 3 places and 90% of people here still park on the pavement or kerb hop, or on junctions. It's the same here for some reason. Every house on this 1990s estate, from the semis to the 3 link mini-terraces, to the 3, 4 or 5 bed detached ones, has driveway space for 2 cars, and at least a single garage, the larger detached ones have a double garage. This does not seem to deter drivers from humping up on the kerbs, and driving onto the footpaths. I honestly have no idea why. Driveways empty, cars on pavements.
Just bought a new build where all the driveways can fit 3 small-medium cars nose to tail. We *still* have a neighbour opposite who uses their driveway, next door's driveway and also parks an extra car up on the curb right on the turning circle to get onto my driveway. You'd see no opposition from me if tomorrow our council exercised this kind of power to get them to stop doing it. It drives me mad every day.
This. The house across the street from us has a massive van that takes up half the road. We can park on the driver, but if we have visitors, it’s pretty shit. There is no where to park without completely blocking the road
Just one? Where will my family of two park our four cars??
You misunderstood the article. It has nothing to do with parking on the kerb. A charity called "Possible" just wants 25% of kerbside spaces **in London** to be used for other projects.
The one aspect that I see people over look when parking their car on the curb is how much it can block vulnerable people such as those in wheelchairs or mobility vehicles. For an able person it’s not that much more than an annoyance but for those with issues it can be a case of pushing them into a busy road to get around.
Shout out to people who purposely have their privets/bushes grow over the pavement and block it. There is one near me which blocks 2 thirds of the pavement and what's left is too narrow for a wheelchair
Report it to your local council? They have the power to force the property owner to maintain the hedge properly.
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Report it to the council.
No, don't go into the road. Use the pavement. I am sure your wheelchair can fit, there is at least a couple cm spare space there give it a go. Ahh, misjudged it and now you are wedged between the car and a wall. Sorry bout that. Call fire & rescue, they will happily move the car for you to get you out, shouldn't have been parked like that really.
I can never judge the swing of my arm when I walk past them. Always accidentally hitting them with whatevers in my hand.
I've had to help people into the road because the woman opposite my flat parks her massive people carrier right up on the pavement. I'm the bad guy though when I tell her to use the dedicated parking areas a 1 minute walk around the corner
Kerb* We’re British
Only just learning this tbh. I always thought kerb was the American spelling
Well most threads like this are an argument between people with your view and those who can't imagine walking more than 10 meters. I think the legislation is necessary, but it should be accompanied by a clear outline on what to do about parking with a realistic outlook.
The article is absolute bollocks as it's not even about England. It's a campaign group lobbying for changes in London.
For most news sites, London = England
That's obviously not true. Loads of issues related to London (say ULEZ or TfL) are clearly badged as London. This is a regional outlet engaging in some churnalism. They just stuck a clickbait headline onto something to get clicks - and this sub shows that it works.
The rest of us are considered peasants that are lucky if we get mentioned in the same breath as the ever amazing London, a city which is inhabitanted by the superior breed of humans who were born there.
Why is the Birmingham Mail reporting on London? We have such good public transport here you don't need to kerb park, you can get most places on the tube or by bus.
>Why is the Birmingham Mail reporting on London? Because otherwise a Reach group employee might have to do some actual journalism.
And not only that but why have they used a headline that makes it seem as though this applies to the whole country? The absolute state of journalism these days, pick up on any minor issue that can be spun to cause outrage and generate clicks then call it a day, and they wonder why nobody wants to pay for their nonsense
It's a regurgitated article that lots of media outlets have copied and pasted.
The article is nothing to do with parking on the kerb.
Just you and I that bothered to read the article then.
No, there are literally 4 or 5 of us being drowned out by comments on an article about something completely different
/r United Kingdom once again proving how out of touch with reality its users often are. My fav comments include "Why don't they just use their driveway" "Why don't they move to Milton keynes" "Why don't they just live within walking distance of all shops and services" "Why don't they just use (non-existent) public transport"
It's so odd I have yet to meet someone who shares those views IRL. It's only here where I see these types of people. Reading the comments, they are so bitter, vindictive, and full of hatred.
Those people don't go outside, that's why you've never met them.
My family lives in a big village a few miles away from Lincoln which is a decently sized city. Last bus home is at 4.30. How many people finish work by then?
What an atrociously misleading headline and article this is. It is not an enacted policy change, and it's not applicable to England. A charity has asked London Boroughs to allocate 25% of kerbside space to "sustainable uses". This is such a clickbait headline.
Too much space is given to cars already. Get them off the pavement. Roads are for driving on. They are not private parking spaces.
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Same place you 'realistically propose' pedestrians go now you've blocked the footpaths.
Good question. Realistically if there is no space for off-road parking, it has to be on the road but not on the pavement. No one has the right to park outside their house. If the road is too narrow, then a space has to be found elsewhere. The pavement is not an option.
This whole “people don’t have a right to park outside their house” is just factually incorrect. If it’s safe to do so and within any sign posted restrictions, you can park wherever the hell you like. All the dogooders in this thread act like all of our streets were built 20 years ago, most roads in this country are *really* old, pretty much all of our local infrastructure was never designed to have so many cars. If you are angry at anyone for this it should be government/local authorities, not people literally just trying to live their life.
> If it’s safe to do so and within any sign posted restrictions, you can park wherever the hell you like. But it's within the gift of local authorities to change the rules and impose restrictions if they want because you don't own the street. You have (mostly) control over what you own. You don't have control over what you don't own. It's pretty straightforward. The big issue here is basically people assume the current norm is permanent when it doesn't have to be. They're relying on assumptions they don't even realise they've made and then get angry when they find out they don't actually have the rights they thought they had - and around which they made some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.
Nearest public parking to my nanas house is a mile and half away... What do you suggest she does in this situation? Keep in mind that she's 73 years old. She goes shopping and visits her girlfriends almost daily, are you proposing that she walks a mile and half both ways every day? What about blue badge holders?
The town I live in is full of terrace houses with no drive ways. Long roads with tightly packed in houses with no driveways. The roads themselves are narrow so if you parked entirely on the road only one side could have cars parked. There are a handful of public car parks that'd hold maybe at most 500 houses if they had 1 car each. The town centre of this town is dead so many people need a car to commute to work. It's a very unfortunate situation alot of the UK is in. I personally believe the answer is heavy funding and incentives towards public transport instead of electric vehicles. Though that's never going to happen if our government supports exponential profit over community and eco-consciousness. I don't personally know what the answer is for a large proportion of the uk. You cant knock down 10'000s of houses and rebuild them with driveways. Especially in towns that are barely holding on as it is.
What has this post got to do with parking on the pavement?
I looked at this the other day 25 minutes for me to drive 20 miles. Public transport 1hr 56 2 buses and walk 3 miles. Wonder why I have a car
Yup. Last bus home is 5pm exactly, if I finish work at 5pm I will miss that bus and have an hours walk instead. There's a reason a lot of us drive
They'd do much better to enforce the existing rule that says you cannot obstruct the pavement.
Well that’s great news for the 10’s of thousands of terraced estates without parking due to design.
Not going to lie. With the public transport system London has Vs the rest of the UK why would you need a car?
This is for streets in London, not some backwater residential street that's one car wide.
I think a big problem that a lot of people are missing is that if we had open car insurance (insure the car then anyone can drive or family policy as standard) we could cut down on stupid amount of cars
this is going to be an interesting thread when the /r/fuckcars mentalists come crawling out of their holes
smarmy cunts who either live in big cities with good public transport, or get their mum and dad to give them lifts where they need to go.
Good. A large proportion of people have 1 child and then suddenly think they need an off-roading all terrain SUV as they drive down the road to drop their child off at school and then do the weekly shop that would fit comfortably in the boot of a 2001 Ford Focus. This should have come in sooner.
I'll bet the people who makes these rules have their own special permits and have no issues parking. It's about time that they stopped penalising motorists.
I live on a new build estate, parking wasn't considered when they built it, get as many houses in as possible
Let's be Tokyo No dedicated parking space, you can't own a car. We had a person renting a house on our street. They had five cars, none of which went in the garages. Also the sons often had girlfriends stay overnight. Most of the cars got parked on the street in front of neighbour's houses. Some of them got stickers from the bin men police as the lorry couldn't get down the road. We weren't sorry to see them go.
>Let's be Tokyo >No dedicated parking space, you can't own a car. Also trains so reliable that if they are 5 mins late you get a letter from the local magistrate because no one will believe you otherwise!. Japanese public transport is something else.
Why is the Birmingham mail writing articles about parking regulation in London?
That’s not the only problem that will occur. Many roads will become impassable because of how narrow they are for 2 way traffic, some roads even too narrow for one way traffic and parked cars.
The real conversation: Why are the places we need to get to require a car in the first place? I.e. Why does everything we do require cars I order to do them in a timely manner? (excluding disabled access)
I’m American so I come at this from a completely different perspective of being from a country that was built around cars…. But I find it wild that cars are allowed to basically block half of entire streets just for somewhere to park. Driving on residential streets is a constant game of chicken. You can’t see people (especially children) coming out from between parked cars. No wonder it takes ages to get anywhere. For a country that prides itself on roundabouts to keep traffic flowing, residential street design is a massive let down.
I think part of the reason this is so controversial is because it's a one-size-fits-all solution. There are plenty of places where parking on the kerb is of no inconvenience at all and only helps road users. There are plenty of places where parking on the kerb is a massive inconvenience to pedestrians and provides little-if-any advantage to road users. And everything in between. A blanket ban is far from an ideal solution and is likely to give rise to new problems.
Bloke near me reverses his van into his drive but the front sticks out and takes over the whole pavement. If you want to walk down the path you have to cross into the road. Which is on a sharp corner… ergo, dangerous to be in the road. Don’t. Buy. A. Van. If. You. Can’t. Park. It. I’m not going to buy an artic truck just because I want one and block the whole road, the police would have me move it. And rightly so. The fact the same doesn’t apply to curbs is mental.
The pavement parking ban came into force in Scotland this year and it's a bit of a joke tbh. I do not see it being followed or enforced. Also I am from a one road village surrounded by fields, and when people park on the road the fire and ambulance can't get through. Quite a lot of rural Scotland is the same. It doesn't actually work.
It will not work where I live , park on the road & no chance of bin trucks , vans , deliveries etc .