Parking on grass verges

[JaredVannett]

Be honest... do you do it?

My house has a driveway that leads to the pavement and then the road... a typical layout (no grass verge).

However in other parts of my neighbourhood houses have pavements that lead over large grass verges before meeting the road, and I've noticed over the past 12 months residents have had enough and resorted to placing rocks (from a quarry?) on the edge of the verge to deter motorists from parking.

I don't park on verges out of respect for the residents, plus I don't need to because my car isn't that large. However in areas with narrower roads motorists appear to have no choice but to park over the verge with larger cars or risk obstructing the road / have the side of their car scraped.

Given that newer cars are much larger these days, should councils consider widening the road at the expense of cutting back the verges nationwide?

I can see both sides of the argument to be fair, motorists wanting to protect their car / avoid obstructing the road, and then residents having to deal with ruined muddy verges outside their house.

[Zoon]

I do think where possible they should be turned into parking spaces given the large number of cars around.
I don't park on them personally as I have adequate offroad parking.

[Jim the Sunderer]

One for the council thread.

[Cupramax]

Jim the Sunderer said:

One for the council thread.

Came here to post exactly this. Feel sorry for some residents in a nearby street, one house being refurbed, the local white van brigade have absolutely trashed the verges for about 3 houses each way.

[Martin_Hx]

Yes its a mess, fortunately i don't have anything like this near where i live, but do where i work.

Next to my work the local residents seem to park pretty well but there are the odd few who dump cars all over the grass and i don't mean half on verge / half on road, full off road

[987Monkey]

Or people could just use their bloody driveways instead of 'claiming' their own piece of road

[Jamescrs]

I don't do it myself as I have a driveway more than big enough for the cars I have, however at my first house I owned (yes it was an ex council house!) whilst I didn't do it myself nor did my neighbour plenty of others did and it looked awful in winter when the ground was soft and prone to ripping up from the rain and snow.

[Riley Blue]

Plant wild flowers:

[Joe5y]

I live in a road with 2 / 3 car driveways. Sadly don't use the drive for anything more than 1 car. This results in all excess cars lined up outside everyone's house. And because most have grass verges, a lot of mud being dragged up the road.

[Alex_225]

I wouldn't consider parking up on a grass verge personally. The only time I would is if I literally had no other option but even then I wouldn't feel comfortable about it. I'm fortunate most along my road have a driveway which they use so there's maybe a handful of cars.

I think if parking is problematic in an area and verges get repeatedly ruined then they should widen the road to accommodate them.

[lyonspride]

Never understood why people park up the kerb on roads where the road is barely wide enough for two cars anyway.

It's better to obstruct the road than to encourage two cars to try to squeeze through the gap and potentially take off your mirror.........

[Pica-Pica]

Riley Blue said:

Plant wild flowers:

If you leave it wild flowers will grow on their own.
I know where I used to live, the council left an unmowed section of the grass verge to how wild, the verge very was at least 12 foot wide. They left the end of the road cut for easy sight lines. The trouble was people parked on that to pick up and drop off pupils from the nearby secondary school. As a parish council, we spoke to our local bobby (he regularly attended our parish council meetings). He said that as long as they are not obstructing it is not a criminal offence. Going on the grass and also damaging it would be a civil offence against the land owner. So that is it really.

[Europa1]

987Monkey said:

Or people could just use their bloody driveways instead of 'claiming' their own piece of road

I have never understood the mentality of people who would rather park their car on the road/verge rather than a driveway. There used to be some people (thankfully a minority) , until the Council put wooden bollards in. The grass verges make the street more attractive, and I cannot understand people who think it's acceptable to turn them into bare patches of mud.

The bollards haven't been 100% successful - when people have building work done, the tradesmen root them out so they can park their vans on the verges. One neighbour had the bollard replaced and the verge re-turfed once the work was done, but others have just left it to the Council to sort out.

[WJNB]

Cars, vans & caravans have been parked on grass verges & on council estates the central grassed areas since the motor car was invented.
It's also 2019 & even fewer care less about their environment or the environment of others.

[JaredVannett]

Europa1 said:

I have never understood the mentality of people who would rather park their car on the road/verge rather than a driveway.

I agree with you, but I know people who do this and their reasoning is that they don't like reversing out into the road. They could alleviate that by reversing into their drive but they don't feel comfortable doing that either.

[Escort3500]

“Given that newer cars are much larger these days, should councils consider widening the road at the expense of cutting back the verges nationwide”?

Sound idea but would be extremely expensive.

[C.A.R.]

I live a stones-throw from a primary school (my eldest attends) and this is a regular problem at school run time. There's a small triangle of grass which is sometimes treated by school run mums as an overflow carpark, when it clearly isn't supposed to be parked on at all.

Local police have been patrolling some mornings as have local council giving out tickets. Doesn't ever seem to catch the right people- who see the fluorescent clad folk and park somewhere else, reverting to their antics the following day.

If I wasn't so weedy I'd go and get some massive boulders from somewhere, particularly for the spot near my driveway which makes it harder to get on/off if idiots park on opposing sides of the road, creating little chicanes.

Where could I find massive rocks? How can a weedy fella like me move them into place?

The only places not affected have these neat little 2ft high square posts (like cut doen fence posts) acting as bollards...

[foxbody-87]

We don’t need less verges, we need less people & cars. I propose a strict 2-child policy as a solution. I would say one child, but I am a second child...

[Galveston]

JaredVannett said:

Be honest... do you do it?
Given that newer cars are much larger these days, should councils consider widening the road at the expense of cutting back the verges nationwide?

Or, maybe when people plan to buy a car they should consider... (1) whether they have somewhere to park it, and (2) whether the car fits into that space.

[PF62]

JaredVannett said:

in areas with narrower roads motorists appear to have no choice but to park over the verge with larger cars or risk obstructing the road / have the side of their car scraped.

No they have plenty of alternatives to being a tt. Buy a smaller car or park elsewhere.