MP`s want a ban on cars parking on pavements.

[Sheepshanks]

mat205125 said:

Understand completely, however the solution isn't necessarily just the age of the estates.

My parents still live in the house that I grew up in that was built in the 1960s.

Looking back at old pictures, the street was near empty when I was young, and through time, most sacrificed front gardens to widen their driveways when the norm pushed towards two cars per household. The time came then when us younglings grew up and bought cars, however were yet to fly the nest, and the norm stretched to 2.5 cars per house.

Even now, in that street, where most houses are still owned by the same generation, the road is jam packed as many have added a caravan or a motorhome to the fleet

Our road was built in the 60's and it did get full of cars when kids started driving, but then they all left. For a while the road was completely empty of cars. Then the oldies started to die or sell up to move to bungalows and softening house prices bought the houses into reach of young couples again.

The weird thing is that the bloke in the new young couples always seems to have a van for work, or the couple have a van they use for leisure purposes. The house across the road from us has both, as well as a car. The works van gets parked on the road, meaning out of working hours the only way to park outside our house is to park partly on the pavement.

Edited by Sheepshanks on Thursday 12th September 15:12

[Daston]

Our estate must be odd, built in the early 2000's the garages are a very good size. I measured mine up and it will happily fit a Nissan GTR or Dodge Viper (although only just on length).

The main issue is my neighbour (who we share the drive with) doesn't use his garage so ends up putting 2 cars on his drive that is only designed for one making it difficult for us to get off our own drive. Or he just dumps his cars on the road opposite the drive exit making exiting the drive equally annoying.

[ChasW]

Daston said:

Our estate must be odd, built in the early 2000's the garages are a very good size. I measured mine up and it will happily fit a Nissan GTR or Dodge Viper (although only just on length).

The main issue is my neighbour (who we share the drive with) doesn't use his garage so ends up putting 2 cars on his drive that is only designed for one making it difficult for us to get off our own drive. Or he just dumps his cars on the road opposite the drive exit making exiting the drive equally annoying.

I am similar position to you though the neighbour with limited space does not cause often cause a hassle. However I reckon filling his garage with junk has cost him house sales. Twice he's had it on the market and failed to sell because buyers are put off by the parking. If he put his cars in his double garage the property would look much nicer and viewers would have somewhere to park!

[MB140]

Flumpo said:

DonkeyApple said:

MB140 said:

I moved in to a new build estate about 5 years ago. 4 bedroom three story house with an inbuilt garage that wouldn’t fit a mini in it let alone any normal sized car. I drive a 1 series and it had 5mm clearance (no way am I using that it’s just an inevitability to damage the car).

The house has 1 car space on the driveway for a 4 bedroom property. Mental. Now when I first moved in there were small plants and shrubs/trees freshly planted on my front property. . I asked the builder to remove them so i could put more bricks down (brick paved driveway). Said sorry were not allowed to a certain % of the development has to be green (shrubs/trees etc). I knew there were restrictions on the estate saying we weren’t allowed to remove the greenery but it’s amazing how quickly they died when coated in industrial weed killer.

I now have 2 parking spaces outside my house perfect. As all properties should have been built in the first place, but no the council refused planning permission until a certain % of green space was allocated.

Now the developer wanting to maximise his profits went fine. Put the green space on each houses footfall but I’m not giving up land that can be used to build extra house on.

Until this regulation changes then it’s going to be a problem no matter what.

An all too common scenario.

The logical move is for councils to insist that every new property has parking spaces to match the number of bedrooms. If a property has 4 bedrooms then it is clearly obvious that at some stage it will need 4 parking spaces. The minimum number of spaces ever should be 2.

The car is here to stay. The way our very society works is wholly constructed around the concept of the car. We may be able to shrink the size of cars through intelligent taxation, change what powers them and their frequency of use but we won’t ever reduce the number of cars without reducing the number of people.

We can’t fix the issue with regards to what has been built but it is insane not to redress the issue going forward.

Something intelligent going forward is that there are large numbers of properties with excess parking availability which owners could monetise by renting out to fellow locals. Taking one of the existing parking mechanisms for doing just this and adapting it for a local community is not the most complex of hurdles.

They are not allowed as it’s against various national policies set by the government. The government approach is get people out of their cars.

That’s no bad thing but when public transport is often unreliable, dirty, expensive, inconvenient then nobody is going to go to public transport. I’m sorry but there building a bypass around the other side of Lincoln.

So far it’s been 15 years in planning and argument and about 5 years in the making. About 20 miles of road in total.

The Chinese manage to build from scratch a metropolitan modern city from scratch to complete in 2 years. And there in lies the problem. Take HS2. It will be double the predicted cost. Marred in political debate and cross party disagreements (see brexit). No wonder nobody uses public transport.

[MB140]

ChasW said:

DonkeyApple said:

MB140 said:

I moved in to a new build estate about 5 years ago. 4 bedroom three story house with an inbuilt garage that wouldn’t fit a mini in it let alone any normal sized car. I drive a 1 series and it had 5mm clearance (no way am I using that it’s just an inevitability to damage the car).

The house has 1 car space on the driveway for a 4 bedroom property. Mental. Now when I first moved in there were small plants and shrubs/trees freshly planted on my front property. . I asked the builder to remove them so i could put more bricks down (brick paved driveway). Said sorry were not allowed to a certain % of the development has to be green (shrubs/trees etc). I knew there were restrictions on the estate saying we weren’t allowed to remove the greenery but it’s amazing how quickly they died when coated in industrial weed killer.

I now have 2 parking spaces outside my house perfect. As all properties should have been built in the first place, but no the council refused planning permission until a certain % of green space was allocated.

Now the developer wanting to maximise his profits went fine. Put the green space on each houses footfall but I’m not giving up land that can be used to build extra house on.

Until this regulation changes then it’s going to be a problem no matter what.

An all too common scenario.

The logical move is for councils to insist that every new property has parking spaces to match the number of bedrooms. If a property has 4 bedrooms then it is clearly obvious that at some stage it will need 4 parking spaces. The minimum number of spaces ever should be 2.

The car is here to stay. The way our very society works is wholly constructed around the concept of the car. We may be able to shrink the size of cars through intelligent taxation, change what powers them and their frequency of use but we won’t ever reduce the number of cars without reducing the number of people.

We can’t fix the issue with regards to what has been built but it is insane not to redress the issue going forward.

Something intelligent going forward is that there are large numbers of properties with excess parking availability which owners could monetise by renting out to fellow locals. Taking one of the existing parking mechanisms for doing just this and adapting it for a local community is not the most complex of hurdles.

This is such old age thinking. Car ownership and usage, as we know it today, is heading towards its grave. Shared and driverless vehicles are the future so the parking issue will disappear well within most of our lifetimes.

I’m in my 40s now I will never share a car with a stranger like your suggesting (mass car pools). I’m just not interested. I can’t see it happening. I leave my work stuff in my car every night. I have spare glasses, books, spare contacts, sunglasses, basic car care kit, phone holder and cable. My wife has a small collection of things too. I’m just not prepared to lug it from one car to the next in a massive car share pool thing. Again this idea might work at a push in a major city. Not once your out of the major city’s.

[otolith]

MB140 said:

I’m in my 40s now I will never share a car with a stranger like your suggesting (mass car pools). I’m just not interested. I can’t see it happening. I leave my work stuff in my car every night. I have spare glasses, books, spare contacts, sunglasses, basic car care kit, phone holder and cable. My wife has a small collection of things too. I’m just not prepared to lug it from one car to the next in a massive car share pool thing. Again this idea might work at a push in a major city. Not once your out of the major city’s.

I can see it happening. It will be Uber, but cheaper, because there won't be a driver to pay.

I will use it, as I use Uber or minicabs now, but I won't give up owning a car.

The young people, who already don't see the point in owning a car, will continue not owning a car.

[Justin Case]

MB140 said:

I’m in my 40s now I will never share a car with a stranger like your suggesting (mass car pools). I’m just not interested. I can’t see it happening. I leave my work stuff in my car every night. I have spare glasses, books, spare contacts, sunglasses, basic car care kit, phone holder and cable. My wife has a small collection of things too. I’m just not prepared to lug it from one car to the next in a massive car share pool thing. Again this idea might work at a push in a major city. Not once your out of the major city’s.

and don't forget child seats

[yellowjack]

About bloody time. Parking on Footways IS illegal because you can't park there without driving on the footway and that's an offence.

Plus I'm sick of seeing ignorant flange-wanglers parking on the FOOTWAY because "I don't want to block the road". Well bless! So you don't want to block the road, but you're happy to force wheelchair and pushchair users out into the CARRIAGEWAY to duke it out with motor traffic? How very fking considerate of you. Now if you could just drive your st-heap to a scrap yard, park it next to the crusher, and lock yourself in the boot, that would be wonderful.

As for the whinging about "I haven't anywhere else to park"? Buy a nicer house then. I haven't worked in 7 years, but managed to move into a house with a two-car driveway and a garage recently. There's an overwhelming majority of second and even third cars parked in the street too. Not my street, we have parking restrictions for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon which pretty much prevents the random long term dumping of vehicles on the highway. But no such restrictions where my brother-in-law lives, and despite almost every house having had a garage and space for three cars when built, the once lovely wide tree-lined avenue is now a claustrophobic jumble of inconsiderately parked 'spare' cars.

Our roads are provided for the purpose of travelling on them to get from one place to another. If you are going to use them as your own private car park, then it's only right that you should pay through the nose for the privilege of obstructing the highways that everyone else is still paying for but cannot now use because you dumped your motor on it. If too many people own too many cars, then something has got to give, and it should definitely NOT be the available road space for those of us who do have off-road parking (and use it) to drive on.