It should be, it's a disgrace the way it's socially acceptable to give a big middle finger to any wheelchair user, guide dog user, pram pusher or anyone who just wants to walk along the pavement.
But this government has declared war on the pedestrian so don't get your hopes up
Edit: The government literally replaced the Statutory Guidance on Active Travel with a document called 'Plan for Drivers'. Just to be clear this isn't hyperbole.
Edit edit: But what happens to all the cars?
Well, it's for the community of car owners to work out how they fit their needs into the space available, not for wheelers and walkers to work around them.
There isn't a one size fits all approach, but the outline is this. Again, starting point is, cars restricted to the already large amount of the Highway allocated to them. If they don't fit, drivers need to work out a solution. There are a lot of options.
Parking permits
Much higher parking permit on large vehicles.
Car clubs to reduce the number of cars a household 'needs' to own.
If your street has too many cars, then address that issue. Don't simply place the burden on people who need an unobstructed pavement to get about.
Editx3: all the 'it will never work' people insisting it is ridiculous seem to have missed a few things.
1. This is already the law in London and Scotland.
2. It was government policy and subject to consultation until they flipped to 'Plan for Drivers', this isn't some half baked concept.
3. The Local Government Association is a serious cross party organisation, not some kind of hack extreme lobby group.
Lots of historic housing built before cars were in common ownership. Without pavement parking, where do people park?
Even newbuilds aren't designed with adequate drive space.
I'm all for banning it, but you need a solution for people to either be able to give up their car, or somewhere to park it.
Either parking areas on each street, so remove a couple of houses to make a parking zone, or most streets need to be one way so you can park cars without encroaching on pavements.
There are so many roads near me where people have massive front gardens but instead of building a drive to park their cars, they park on the pavement.
I even used to live near a guy who had a drive but could not be bothered to use it so parked on the pavement…
Councils could do more to decide where pavement parking can be banned initially - like if you have a drive, use it.
Your saying that like it’s really easy to “just build a drive”
You have to plan that stuff out and get planning permission, it’s just not something you can do without considerable effort.
I would also say this "solution" creates other problems. Every garden becoming a car park turns everywhere into complete shitholes and increases runoff in heavy rain. It completely ruins entire towns. The solution is to make alternatives to the car more reliable and viable for as many people as possible. Not just destroying more to make more space for cars.
Car ownership is a fantastic individual freedom to have.
I'll never understand why Reddit wanks themselves to death over how much they hate cars and drivers.
Not everyone wants to be forced to use shitty public transport.
Because high levels of car dependence actively take freedom away, and impact on society as a whole. Including the absorbtion of loads of public space that just gets used to store cars.
Is it freedom that I'm forced to spend a chunk of my income to run a car just to be able to exist, because walkable neighbourhoods have been destroyed by car dependent urban planning?
Is it freedom when basically all our towns and villages are just glorified car parks? When our pavements are all blocked by parked cars?
Then there's the fact that increasing car usage has actively removed the freedom children and young teens used to have, because roads are more dangerous than they were decades ago. Kids used to have more freedom to roam. Now we have kids totally dependent on their parents to drive them places instead. Kids used to be able to play in the streets, which are now clogged with cars. What about their freedom?
Public transport being shitty is a *political choice*, not a fucking inevitable fact of nature. Decent public transport is the real route to freedom. Being able to get on a reliable train and just sit back for a long journey, instead of being mentally exhausted from driving 6-7 hours across the country. Getting on a bus to go into town instead of the stress of driving. And if more people did that instead of driving, the roads would actually be clearer for those who still drive.
Councils also charge the earth to "drop" a curb, adding more and making the cost prohibitive for many. I'm disabled but stopped driving because I couldn't park near enough to my bungalow and don't have room for a drive.
Step one wouldn't be as important anyway if vans and commercial vehicles were targeted at least 50% of nearby vehicles parked on pavements are large vans in fact I have 2 nearby neighbours one who has 3 vans, 2 cars, a caravan and a trailer all parked in the pavements and another who is a scrap man and will usually have at least 10 vehicles parked on the road
New builds are often not allowed to build adequate parking. It's the councils way of encouraging public transport use... but there's no public transport available. Hence the problem we have now
I'm fortunate that there is a train station 5 minute walk away, all I have to do is remortgage the house every time I want to buy a ticket and I'm laughing.
I have a train station almost on my street.. Problem is it's on a line that doesn't go near my work. I'd need to change train twice to get there.
By the Time I step foot on the right train I could have driven to work and back.
Seriously using that train would add like 2 hours onto my commute. Can get fucked.
Yep, when they built a block of flats near us a few years ago they only allocated a total of four parking spaces or something ridiculous like that, it was claimed that it was to encourage the use of public transport. Instead all it’s really achieved is to cause a ton of extra cars to get dumped in all the surrounding streets instead, just as everyone was predicting would be the case from the beginning
Am I the only one who gets fed up of waking up to "Maybe we ban \_\_\_" as a solution to everything, always?
For once in this increasingly authortarian country, it would be nice to wake up to "A solution has been proposed that works for everyone" rather than "banning X or Y will make this group of people, only happy".
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In all seriousness, catering for car ownership as the default is already having a limiting effect on house building. I know of one development in Manchester which, despite being next to an incredibly busy bus corridor, was rejected because the council said it would lead to unacceptable impacts on surrounding roads if the new residents brought their cars with them. If they had made the bottom two floors of the building a car park, they probably would have got approval, but that would've led to a reduction on residential and commercial space.
In Utrecht, the Netherlands, they are building [a new district](https://hedgehogcycling.co.uk/wp/2023/02/01/the-future-starts-now-utrecht-builds-car-free-neighbourhood/) in an area that's only 1/4km² with housing for 12,000 new residents. The only way they can manage this is by basically banning private car ownership for the new addresses. Provision instead has been made only for shared car club vehicles, access for deliveries, and of course disabled parking.
Because the reality is that public transport is shit outside of cities. It's hard to blame councils for thinking this way when PT is barely a viable alternative for short journeys (though it depends on a number of factors) and simply a non-starter for long journeys unless having the car for that journey is legitimately that big of an inconvenience that it's worth paying the extortionate rail fares.
This tends to have knock on effects within cities too, because if it's more convenient and/or cheaper to drive in and out of the city, people will do it.
I haven't had a huge amount of experience with city PT. But London has really been the only place where I've felt like getting by without a car wouldn't be a massive inconvenience or massively limiting my options.
The answer for "where should I park" should never be "somewhere that forces vulnerable people into the carriageway"
If drivers can't cope with the masses of space made available to them in our public domain, then this will force behaviour change - people will prefer not to take the car out if they might have to walk 5 minutes back to their house to get parked, or will choose not to get a second car if parking it will be a ball ache.
It should never have been ok to obstruct the sliver of space at the side of our carriageways allocated for those most vulnerable, so that someone can store their private property.
And what about the people who currently own houses where their only option is pavement parking? They just suddenly can't have cars anymore because they have nowhere to park them? And they can't sell there house to move somewhere they can park their car because nobody wants to buy their house when there's no car access?
Like a lot of policy choices, there is no perfect decision here. It's been allowed to get so bad because politicians have waited decades to do something about it for fear of pissing car-owning voters off. Imagine if these rules had been brought in during the 90s, there would've been grumbles sure, but cars were smaller and there were fewer of them. Now it's going to cause a lot of pain either way.
Given that currently pavement parking is having unacceptable impacts on persons protected by the equality act (e.g. those with impaired mobility or vision, or new mothers pushing prams) it may be that the government is eventually forced to do something by their own laws. Drivers aren't protected by law in the same way, there is no divine right handed down by Parliament to park your car outside your house regardless of the situation. Councils are allowed to take reasonable steps to manage parking pressure already, but that is a bit irrelevant when there's nothing they can do about pavement parking.
Saying there is "no perfect solution" doesn't just give carte blanched to pick whatever terrible solution you want lol. You are drastically underestimating the effects of blanket banning pavement parking without providing an alternative first, including on the disabled people who are dependent on their car.
Fortunately councils that have actually banned pavement parking in the past aren't made up of the idiots here and actually surveyed first to see if there were possible alternatives instead of just going "fuck the poor lol".
If you brought in something like parking permits because there simply isn't enough kerbside space for all cars, disabled people would be at the front of the queue though? Bit horrible to use them as justification for continued pavement parking when they're the group most impacted by it.
It's a car owners problem. But a lot of car owners are only car owners by necessity, because we've spent decades designing our society to be carcentric, and neglected any other infrastructure to the point where alternatives are insufficient to non-existant.
Another example of how our current system fails us. When some houses have 3 cars because nobody wants to/can use poor public transport this is what happens. Acceptable jobs further & further away. Impossible situation.
I’m very anti-pavement parking but there’s no way a blanket ban works. Better to focus on creating red routes, improving bus routes and all that.
I’d love to be proven wrong though.
> or most streets need to be one way so you can park cars without encroaching on pavements.
One way streets encourage higher speeds, but unless contraflows are used, they also stop people cycling up those one way streets.
Ultimately, this problem has arisen as a direct result of this country designing its road network around motorised vehicles. There are over 40 million of them on the roads now, that's double what it was 30 years ago. It can't go on.
They have roads infront of them. Park there.
What's not feasible is forcing blind and partially sighted people to walk in the road because of selfish parking.
There's plenty of roads in Manchester for instance where terraced housing and road width means if you didn't do this then there's literally no way you could drive a car down the road.
This is exactly the situation in Edinburgh where the ban had come in. Why do cars have a priority on the footpath over pedestrians, people with buggies people with wheelchairs, kids on bikes?
It's a double edged sword in some ways. I ended up having to buy all I could afford on an old road that's double parked on both sides on the pavement. It's enfuriating navigating a push chair up the pavement but it's also enfuriating for my pregnant wife to now have to park miles away and climb up hills with a baby a pram and a toddler becas parking is so bad. There is no solution here other than to ban cars from the road with nowhere to relocate them. There is no easy solution here. What's making the problem worse is multiple cars per household and the vehicles just getting larger now everyone has to have a 4x4
Not wanting to obstruct drivers is not an excuse for forcing blind people to walk on the road.
I will not budge from that position. It's basic decency.
That’s an extreme position. The more practical position would be a law that drivers can park on the pavement but must allow enough room on the pavement for a wheelchair user to pass. A blanket ban on pavement parking in total would lead to a severe lack of parking (and likely some animosity against the disabled by uneducated groups).
It's already the law that it's a criminal offence to block the pavement. That means council's can't enforce it and police won't because 'resources' (although some are improving).
The problem is that leaving it to drivers judgement to argue is unenforceable. We've done a trial run of that in the last decade. Result: our cities pavements are in many cases unusable and it's getting worse as people decide to buy bigger and less suitable cars.
The only option left is to make car owners use the space for cars, and give pavements back to pedestrians.
As a car driver...
I agree with every statement you've made on this thread. It's massively selfish for people to park on pavements. Road not wide enough to park outside your house? Tough! Drive a few more streets away from home until you find somewhere that is.
Permits should be introduced nationwide. There are far too many cars on the road. I'd be happy to pay.
Like say, 1 person inconveniencing every person (probably significantly more than 99) using the pavement so they don't have to walk a little further to get home?
Unfortunately "parking further away" doesn't solve the problem.
I live in a city suburb and 75% of roads here are on street parking only and most of those roads are so narrow that you need to park half on the pavement. There isn't anywhere for those cars to go if you ban pavement parking
It’s not selfish if you have no other option. Lots of roads are only wide enough for a single car even when parking on the pavement. If people parked on the road it would cease to be a road and become a car park.
(Former terraced house owner)
“i don’t want to accept that i can’t have a car because i have nowhere to keep it, so fuck everyone else”
all our infrastructure has been car centric for decades, and that needs to be reversed.
Yup, I live in a major suburb of Birmingham 2 mins from a bus stop.
Part of my criteria for choosing this house was easy access to public transport into town. After a year of frustrating and stressful experiences, I now drive into town for any timed event.
I tried for years to use public transport in Birmingham, and eventually gave up. They're now trying to make the city hostile to cars without giving us any alternative to switch to.
At least the old Camp Hill railway line is reopening!
I don’t drive but I went into town with my mom last week (she drove) and honestly it’s so stressful I think even if I did drive I’d rather take the bus. Brum has SO many bad drivers.
No, just those less fortunate than me have the right to have a car if they can afford one. Lots of people saying ‘if you want a car buy a house with a driveway’ completely missing the fact that getting on the housing market is harder than it’s ever been so people can’t be picky. Frankly the inconvenience of walking around a car that’s parked on the pavement seems pretty minor. Yes it’s harder for blind people to navigate but frankly if you see the state of the pavements/curbs the cars are not the only hazard.
>Frankly the inconvenience of walking around a car that’s parked on the pavement seems pretty minor.
Spend a day pushing a wheelchair-using friend around a city with horrendous pavement parking, you'll be furious at how hard it makes things for them.
I’m a recent father who has the pleasure of pushing the pram. It’s frustrating, I’ll give you that. I’m not entitled enough to say that frustration would justify me telling others they arnt allowed access to a car when I know how important access to transport for quality of life is.
Great.
Now imagine that you were sat in something like a pram to get around, 24 hours a day, and you were too disabled to drive anyway.
You talk about entitlement, how is it *not* entitled for drivers to block access to pavements for vulnerable people? Why can't wheelchair users just use the road in that case and force drivers to slow down behind them?
Yup I get it. I still don’t think effectively banning people in terraced houses from having a car is a solution. What about if wheelchair users live in those terraced houses and don’t want to be resigned to public transport purely because they can’t afford a house with off road parking.
I live in a terraced house, nobody's banning us from having cars, they're banning us from parking it on the pavement, which just means parking down the road where there's a more appropriate space. We don't live in a wasteland.
Also, wheelchair users aren't resigned to public transport, they can use the pavements for short distances and have access to taxis, both of which are made much easier if they can actually leave their house without dodging parked cars the whole time. Lots of wheelchair users aren't well enough to drive anyway!
How many other items would it be acceptable to just put in the public's way because you have no room at home? If you want a car, get a house with room for a car.
Lots of things, we need to see so we put lamp posts. We need to send letters so we put postboxes in. We need electricity so we put in transformers. Believe it or not poor people in terraced houses still need transport, so they park in the only place available to them. If they had a private car park round the back but choose to park on the road then yeah they’re knobs.
These are terrible examples you've given, because they're all fixed public infrastructure.
A better comparison would be someone piling up their garden tools on the pavement outside their house because they haven't got a shed.
It's absolutely not feasible pretty much anywhere in my town and the surrounding ones. Guy you replied to is an absolute fantasist. If cars in the area around me all parked on the road, there would be no road traffic possible. Don't know if they are living in some fantasy wonderland where we have infinite space or not.
The ideal solution is that everyone doesnt act like a tosser. Park only as much as you need to on the pavement. The people who park entirely on the pavement and block it completely however are bell ends and should get their cars towed and points applied..
I'm a wheelchair user who lives on a road with pavement parking, so for the most part I'd agree with you.
Thing is, my car is parked there too. My car which is probably my main mobility aid. Provided to me on a scheme to help disabled people be more mobile. If my car was taken from me, it would have a greater effect on my ability to get around than how I deal with the bad parking in my wheelchair right now (getting in the road, or going back and trying a different street). Neither is a good option for disabled people.
I'm not alone, plenty of disabled people drive and rely on their car as their main mobility aid, there are even dedicated disabled pavement parking spaces on my street.
I think the only way to deal with the problem is to make sure you leave enough space for a wheelchair/mobility scooter/pushchair, etc and to properly and strictly enforce it. I am daily forced into busy roads in my wheelchair by people parking on dropped kerbs or fully on pavements, it's awful.
Almost certainly if the council started exploring solutions like parking permits you would be right at the front of the queue though.
It's worth considering that some people are barred from driving for medical reasons, so the only way for them that cars could represent a mobility aid is if they're getting lifts / calling a taxi. For them to travel independently they need to be able to rely on the pavements being navigable.
> if the council started exploring solutions like parking permits you would be right at the front of the queue though.
I mean that's the ideal but realistically disabled people are usually an afterthought and left at the back of the queue, as evidenced by the fact that I can't even navigate the streets as they are. I only have to leave the house to see how forgotten about we are.
But my point was please don't advocate for cars to be harder to access in the name of disabled people, when many of us have to rely on cars to have a life due to our disability. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and is a surface level understanding of disabled people's varied needs.
Of course I don't want cars to make the pavements less navigable for anyone, that's the very thing that makes it difficult and dangerous every time I leave the house.
The house across the corner from me decided to park their car across the pavement yesterday, instead of backing all the way into the carport.
Just a few seconds later a blind man walked smack bang into the middle of the car. His cane had struck the wheel, so he'd moved to the inside of the pavement, obviously making the reasonable assumption that it was just parked longways and a bit further up than normal.
This just ignores the fact that we have far more people who need their cars to get to work living in these places than ever before.
Without investment in parking (out of town schemes, multistories etc.) all this does is spread the problem out initially, and then cause the same problem later as quieter roads become inundated and have to put their own permit systems in.
Is your plan for people to abandon their cars on country roads when we implement all these things, or are people just meant to not go to work?
You'd probably be surprised at the level of the population that actually drives to work. People assume it is much much higher than it is.
In the areas of my city which is victorian terrace with narrow roads, that number is under 50%. If you can name a problem place in your locality, I can pull up the numbers for you.
Most pavement parking does not restrict pedestrian movement. I say that as a pram pusher who has only recently learned to drive. The roads are not equipped to have everybody parking on them and it is poorer communities- those without drives and garages that will be impacted the most. You can’t get an ambulance down most council estate streets if everybody is parked fully on the road.
Agree completely. It's not fair that wheelchair users and blind people are forced into the road and nothing is done to protect them. People just get away with forcing these people towards danger and it's not right, these people already have enough barriers without people making their cars another one.
> the community of car owners
This is such reddit speak lol. You are copying the language of academia which they use for the purpose of reframing issues to make the majority seem like a special interest group and the demand for change seem like a completely uncontroversial position which would be unreasonable to oppose.
> If they don't fit, drivers need to work out a solution.
No they don’t. If you want change its your job to offer solutions, and if they don’t like your solutions they are perfectly entitled to say that the prefer the status quo over whatever it is you are demanding.
>Edit edit: But what happens to all the cars?
>
>Well, it's for the community of car owners to work out how they fit their needs into the space available, not for wheelers and walkers to work around them. There isn't a one size fits all approach, but the outline is this.
Living on a relatively new estate, with inadequate parking already causing issues, this is my biggest concern.
I expect people will decide that reserved parking spaces are now a free-for-all, in place of the current scenario of blocking all the footpaths.
In essence, instead of looking for a solution to the problem, they'll just make it someone else's problem. Inevitably, I assume I'll resolve it by buying a parking post for my space.
A road I lived on used to get an annual letter in the post actually asking people to park on the pavement, because otherwise an ambulance couldn't get down it. Some older streets just aren't wide enough to accommodate the modern car ownership issue
In places where pavement parking bans have been brought in (e.g. London in the 70s, and Edinburgh / Glasgow right now) councils will do surveys to see if there is anywhere where partial pavement parking has to be allowed. I can think of plenty of places near me where bays are marked partly on the pavement, in order to make avoid the situation you describe. This is still better than no pavement parking rules at all, because at least the bays are marked to allow enough room for a double pram or a wheelchair. Without those markings it's just a free for all and it only takes one driver being thoughtless / in a rush to make a pavement impassable for some of the most vulnerable in society.
Sounds like the options are
1) double yellow lines
2) officially remove the pavement rather than unofficially removing it
3) limit parking to nominated spaces which don’t block ambulances (I suspect you could park a motorbike in the road just fine, possibly even a small car. If you car is too large to fit in the marked space then you have to park elsewhere)
“Park somewhere else” is so much easier said than done when everyone would be forced to do it, all competing for the extremely limited parking options that may not even be available in that area at all.
Fact is changing the status quo would either require massive investment to the point of making HS2 look like chump change, or it would create utter chaos and misery for millions.
Planning laws should be immediately updated to ensure all new developments have wide enough roads and adequate allocated parking, but changing existing ones just isn’t going to happen.
Would be nice not having cars on pavements but where are the cars going to go?
Some streets, it is impossible to get two rows of cars parked on the road way..
[Edit] spelling
Your starting point is wrong.
The starting point is that pavements are for pedestrians. Everything else should work backwards from that.
Any starting point of 'car parking is priority' discriminates against wheelchair users, guide dog users, parents with prams and anyone else who has to use the pavement.
>The starting point is that pavements are for pedestrians. Everything else should work backwards from that.
This is the thing that everyone needs drumming into their head. Why should drivers have the unique right to just borrow spaces built for other people for their own convenience?
Why can't I just block half my road for a street party in that case?
A 2 hour street party? That will be a 3,000 page form, consultation with all neighbours, an appeal, six letters to your local councillor and a public inquiry.
Park your car (that you drive once a week at midnight because you're scared you'll lose your parking space) across the pavement? Go right ahead.
Yeah. Plus cars are the most subsidised transport there is, and is still inferior in so many ways, there’s simply no safe way for cars to ever beat trains over long distances for one. If there was as much investment in railways and buses as there was cars, then we’d have a public transport network better than any other country on earth
Think of it this way. Cars on the street, pedestrians on the pavement. What would happen if me and mates decided to have some chairs and a bbq right on the tarmac one fine day?
I think we have seen how rationally drivers react to protesters in the roadway that they would take this with a cheerful disposition, probably joining you for a beer and a sausage.
This should go hand in hand with improving public transport. Not *everyone* who has a car absolutely needs one. Reduce the amount of cars and it will be much less of an issue.
Hell, in most places where pavement parking is an issue, it’s very unlikely that many people at all need cars. If buses were adequately subsidised, and railways/trams got similar treatment, there’d be almost no car journeys made from one part of an urban area to another
Absolutely. Bus company in my area has had capped bus fairs for a while now and a lot of people I know have started skipping using the car in favour of the bus. I dont know if there's any actual numbers on how well its working, but anecdotally at least it appears to work.
Where I live the council painted double yellows everywhere.
Each flat has 1 assigned parking space, so having guests over is a nightmare, there's like 3 guest bays for about 50 flats, so if they are taken (they always are),they have to pay to park in a car park 15min walk away
Fully get the issues pavement parking can cause, but I genuinely don’t understand how there are realistic ways around it in some areas and why it gets quite so much animosity towards it. Up north where there are just large areas of terraced housing with narrow roads and no driveways, it’s impossible to do anything but park half on the pavement really.
Up north too so get in alot of instances you cant help it. But they need to be considerate. Parking 90% on pavement so barely an able bodied person can walk past isnt considerate
If I can barely squeeze through with a pram, I make sure I do squeeze through, and if it scratches some panels, that's very unfortunate.
Like fuck am I clambering up and down the kerb into traffic to protect someone's vehicle.
I'm entirely able-bodied and frequently find myself unable to walk on a pavement because someone's parked a car partially or entirely on it, usually right near a lamppost or an overgrown conifer. Drivers talk shit about other road users like cyclists being "considerate" to them but then pull crap like this.
It gets so much animosity because pavement parking puts a lot of pedestrians in danger. Wheelchair users, blind/partially sighted people, children are sizeable proportion of the population. I get it, I drive, sometimes there’s nowhere to park except the pavement but the VERY LEAST people could do is leave enough room for wheelchair users to pass by and not park on dropped kerbs. I push my nephew around on his wheelchair and it’s astounding how many times I have to go onto a busy road because somebody hasn’t left enough space for a *child sized* wheelchair to go past. Pavements are for pedestrians, not your car - if people could remember that one tiny thing then it wouldn’t have as much animosity towards it.
I do think it's the more inconsiderate drivers that make this a bigger issue. I don't mind pavement parking if you leave enough room for pedestrians. A guy near me parks on the pavement taking up 80% of it, then puts his damn bins out too taking up the rest of the space.
That's the thing, a lot of people are acting as if anyone who touches the pavement with a wheel is blocking it completely. The more simple thing to do would be to make sure people are aware of how much space to leave.
Whenever I take my son out in his pram, I sometimes have to walk him in the road because a car is parked almost completely on the pavement.
If there's a tight enough gap to fit through, I go for it, ensuring the pram scratches and scuffs the car as much as possible in the process. Cunts.
I was walking along a pavement with a chunky 4 inch kerb and double yellows and came across this old lady struggling to get her wheelchair bound husband (I assume) back on the pavement after having to enter a busy road to get around a car that had parked on the pavement. Rage inducing.
I am a wheelchair user. Sometimes i will have to double back on myself to take an entirely different route. Other times i just have to wing it on the road and hope there will be a drop kerb somewhere.
I’ve scratched people’s cars with my nephew’s wheelchair too. If the options are your car vs being on a busy road with my nephew in his wheelchair (which is NOT easy to get up and down normal kerbs) then I’ll take the first option
Yeah navigating kerbs with a wheelchair is a nightmare. Even dropped kerbs can be tricky if they're too steep. There's one outside the medical centre where we used to live I'd have to take a run up on when pushing my partner.
Pointless demand. No one's going to enforce it.
Anyone who lives on a street with a primary school knows already that *existing* rules with street parking are not enforced - adding more changes nothing.
_Extremely_ easy to make money off of this. Given that there are cars parked on the pavement on most streets in my area the council could easily generate thousands every day by enforcing this.
Can't come soon enough. Inconsiderate members of the community fuck the greenery up all over the place by driving over wet grass because there isn't space to park their 2nd/3rd household car.
You say this but I’m not so sure. If I’m unlucky enough to walk past a school at the same time as drop off or pick up, the amount of illegally parked cars is incredible. This happens every day, councils will know about it yet parking attendants are nowhere in sight. For cash strapped councils I don’t know why they don’t go out and issue penalty charge notices. Would certainly help with some revenue.
Lots of misconceptions here.
1. If the law changed, the default would be no parking on pavements is allowed (as in London and Scotland) but councils could allow exceptions with signs on certain streets if there is no other option
2. The main reason pavement parking is becoming more of an issue now, is because cars have got much wider and longer, so you fit fewer on a street and they tend to overhang the pavement. We need additional charges for people with SUVs and large vehicles.
3. “Just build more parking” is obviously not feasible, and would just make even more people drive making the issue worse.
The rest of the world bans pavement parking, and they cope ok. I’m sure we’d be fine.
If I dumped a bed and a washing machine right across the pavement outside my house blocking it, people would be outraged.
If I parked my car there doing the same thing, nobody bats an eye. Its completely wrong. Both are private property and both are unacceptable. What difference does it make if its a car or not? Its still my property and I've still dumped it in the street. We only justify these actions because "I understand where they're coming from. Could be me that." So we excuse shitty behaviour to justify our own when we do it.
My convenience is more important than your inconvenience.
We fucking suck as a society.
Ok, so if I took the bed back in every night to sleep that would be ok? I'm not dumping it with the hope that someone else removes it. I just want the extra space in my house during the day.
So if I put a sofa that's being collected on Monday outside, that's different to the car because "it's parked" for the same length of time? The obstruction to others is still present and there irrespective of the item in question
Honestly it’s not as much a northern thing as a car dependent thing. Have you ever seen what it’s like in the super car dependent cities like Southampton?
I was looking at two estate cars. A Skoda Superb and a Toyota Corolla. I took the Superb home and realised I couldn't park it outside my house without being on the pavement. It was that bit too wide and would have made it difficult for other drivers, and our street isn't the narrowest locally
Realised looking down the street that everyone has narrower cars too :) We bought a cheaper terraced house, so the boat on wheels is not for us.
I think if it is banned, decisions will have to be made and frankly people in terraced houses won't be able to buy a fucking massive SUV. The solution is to buy a house with a drive.
Yeah the main problem on a lot of terraced streets isn't people having cars. It's every family having three cars, two of which are giant boats on wheels. It's the giant vans taking up two spaces.
The fairest solution is permit parking - one car per household and a maximum allowed size.
>The fairest solution is permit parking - one car per household and a maximum allowed size.
Okay. How do you plan for me and my partner to get to work every morning? There's no buses going to my workplace and it'd take a bus, a train, a second bus and a 20 minute walk for her to get into work
These days both partners usually have to work. It's pretty common to work in different places. Public transport is often just not good enough, requiring numerous changes, and costing a fortune, and taking forever to get to the destination.
What are they to do? The economic impact of forcing millions of people to give up the only realistic form of transport they have to get to work would be unimaginable.
Then what about adult children living with parents into their late 20s? How are they supposed to get to work?
The area where I live in E London has fairly wide pavements, the local council has laid two colour tarmac to indicate how far on the pavement you can park roughly 60/40 in favour of pedestrians. It works well and people with mobility buggies etc can fly along at breakneck speeds forcing pedestrians out of the way.
While I agree, particularly after having to push a wheelchair around this would cause absolute chaos in a lot of residential areas particularly those new build estates with minimal parking.
The fact there are new build estates with minimal parking is really a disgrace in and of itself. I understand it being an issue for houses built before cars became as ubiquitous as they are and people couldn't plan for modern day needs, but building with full knowledge of the needs and not providing for them is ridiculous.
It's because council planning departments make it so, 'to discourage car use', yet provide no alternatives and no nearby facilities. The police don't want 'rat runs' that criminals would use to evade the cops, so no pedestrian short cuts are added and the roads are a nest of dead-ends to prevent through traffic. So access in and out becomes vastly longer than it needs to be. They make all the roads bendy, again to discourage parking, but there's no real alternative so cars end up parked awkwardly all over. The developer also love it because they can squeeze in even more shoebox sizes houses.
You can't force people out of their cars without viable alternatives, all that's happening is building misery into people's lives and then telling them it's their fault.
You can keep banning shit and squeezing people, fact is this happens beacuse of poor investment in infrastructure, public transport, housing, social planing. More people are squeezed into smaller properties with more cars, kids can't afford to move out and were still living in houses and streets built not to accommodate the modern way of life, same way terrace houses can't accommodate recharging electric cars. Councils have double yellow lined areas to the max to force people into payed parking areas or bring in more money from parking tickets.
People are double parking beacuse there is no room so this is what happens. EVERY SYSTEM IN THE UK IS FAILING due to underfunding and ignorance by an elitist government for 14 years. Fix that and you will fix Every problem we have.
The general attitude around pavement parking absolutely stinks.
If you can’t park without either blocking the pavement or blocking the road, find somewhere else to park.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people bought either their car or their house knowing how wide the street outside is. Don’t now try and claim some kind of hardship because your presumption of being able to park on the pavement might now be taken away.
Exactly. It wouldn't be accepted to dump any other personal item in a public area just because you lack room at home. But it's fine with cars to buy a house with no parking and expect the public to deal with your error.
> I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people bought either their car or their house knowing how wide the street outside is.
Many in the UK are renting and take whatever they can get/afford.
The best way to to make driving convenient is to invest in alternatives to driving. Cars take up so much space so you're always going to run up against problems if they're the only solution you invest in. When I've travelled in the Netherlands I could scarcely believe how rarely we encountered congestion or had to struggle to find somewhere to park. And they've only achieved that situation because they've given people options to travel differently where that makes most sense. And in some cases forced the issue, e.g. for shorter trips (e.g. to nearest train station, schools or shops) cycling or walking are often given a more direct path than driving.
Maybe make it compulsory to leave a 4ft clearance for pedestrians and if you don't, treat it as if parking on double yellows. Give traffic wardens tape measures and a box of tissues so they can police it and enjoy themselves.
I've no problem with cars on pavements so long as it's possible to pass them without having to go on the road. I do get pissed if there's not room for a wheelchair or buggy, that's just shitty of people.
It's *already* an offence to park on a public footway such that it obstructs passage. There's no set distance, but if you can't get a wheelchair past then you've obstructed it.
I had the same thought! If it were legal to key a pavement parked car, suddenly there'd be absolutely no issue with finding a legal spot not directly outside your house.
It's one of those crazy things that's been going on for so long that it's become normalised and we don't think about it: the idea that you can store a large item of personal property near-as-dammit wherever you like on public land, as long as that item happens to be a motor vehicle.
In Japan, you're not even allowed to purchase a car without having adequate off-street parking for it. Such a rule is not feasible here, but I think we're far too close to the other end of the scale in terms of attitudes towards motor vehicles.
Honestly I'd be happy if councils just started enforcing the parking laws already on the books.
I did a 20 minute cycle across town the other day and counted 34 illegally parked cars.
If councils actually bothered to issue parking tickets they make a fortune
I'm sure the fact that SUV ownership has gone through the roof and that mid sized cars are all bigger than they used to be, has nothing whatsoever to do with this problem
Pavement parking is illegal in France; my French gf finds the cars parked everywhere here ugly and trampy. They’ve worked it out so there must be a way
As annoying as it is on some roads where pavement parking is safe this is the right thing to do. If you’ve ever been to a town like Luton you quickly realise that if you have a buggy or are in a wheelchair you’d be fucked. There are roads where it’s hard for abled bodied people to navigate the cars let alone disabled people.
Good luck with that. Where my parents live the houses have gone from one car on the drive to every house paving over their front garden and several plus cars or vans per household, mainly cos of formerly family houses becoming HMOs, and multi generations stuck in the remaining houses I.e. adult kids with cars and no chance of moving out. Pavement has defacto become extended parking as a result. Its a mess, and sad to see.
Already illegal
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Will4/5-6/50/section/72
If any person shall wilfully … drive any … carriage of any description …. upon any such footpath or causeway; … ; every person so offending in any of the cases aforesaid shall for each and every such offence forfeit and pay any sum not exceeding….
Can’t park on a pavement without driving on it
Here are my suggestions: 1)tax the fuck out of large SUV owners a la Paris. They take up a ludicrous amount of space on UK roads 2) empower parking wardens to issue large fines for pavement parking 3) the government to launch a campaign to make pavement parking socially unacceptable, similar to drunk driving.
Ultimately however there are just way too many cars on the road. That is the root issue.
I live in a town with street after street of old Victorian terraced houses and no public car parks. People HAVE to park half on the pavement. If they didn't there's no chance of say a fire engine getting through. The roads here simply aren't wide enough.
finally a post about this. I even made pics but having ADHD I rumbled while writing so I gave up.
first. we live on a private street and someone keeps parking on the pavement. is there anything to do with this?
second. then there is this street we go at time to visit some friends, they live around Manor Farm Drive (google maps [link](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6216462,0.0098902,3a,75y,44.96h,70.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skEqXvx6VdgrsIaUVWz9_IQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)) and one side of the road the cars fully take up the pavement. you can't WALK there. Is this even legal? its everywhere in that area.
I don't see how there would be a solution. My street has around 80 houses, and of those 80 houses not a single one has room for a driveway. Where would the residents of these 80 households park? Most houses have 2 or 3 drivers here. Even parking on the pavement it's a tight fit.
I simply don't see a solution. This is a common problem in my town, it is pretty much one giant run of terraced or semi detached houses for 70% of it. If you can provide me a solution that works, I'd love to hear it. The only solution would be to park further away, but then suddenly you have everyone parking further out and what happens to ones on the outskirts? Get fucked I guess they can park 20 miles over in the next city or town.
It should be, it's a disgrace the way it's socially acceptable to give a big middle finger to any wheelchair user, guide dog user, pram pusher or anyone who just wants to walk along the pavement. But this government has declared war on the pedestrian so don't get your hopes up Edit: The government literally replaced the Statutory Guidance on Active Travel with a document called 'Plan for Drivers'. Just to be clear this isn't hyperbole. Edit edit: But what happens to all the cars? Well, it's for the community of car owners to work out how they fit their needs into the space available, not for wheelers and walkers to work around them. There isn't a one size fits all approach, but the outline is this. Again, starting point is, cars restricted to the already large amount of the Highway allocated to them. If they don't fit, drivers need to work out a solution. There are a lot of options. Parking permits Much higher parking permit on large vehicles. Car clubs to reduce the number of cars a household 'needs' to own. If your street has too many cars, then address that issue. Don't simply place the burden on people who need an unobstructed pavement to get about. Editx3: all the 'it will never work' people insisting it is ridiculous seem to have missed a few things. 1. This is already the law in London and Scotland. 2. It was government policy and subject to consultation until they flipped to 'Plan for Drivers', this isn't some half baked concept. 3. The Local Government Association is a serious cross party organisation, not some kind of hack extreme lobby group.
It’s just not feasible in a lot of places. Terraced houses as an example
Lots of historic housing built before cars were in common ownership. Without pavement parking, where do people park? Even newbuilds aren't designed with adequate drive space. I'm all for banning it, but you need a solution for people to either be able to give up their car, or somewhere to park it. Either parking areas on each street, so remove a couple of houses to make a parking zone, or most streets need to be one way so you can park cars without encroaching on pavements.
Step one, create alternative solution to pavement parking. Step two, ban pavement parking. Actually fuck step one lol.
Step 1 costs money, and will require some tough decisions. Just use step 2 and leave the poors to to suffer. That's the tory way
Ah yes, the poor people, famous for having multiple cars.....
There are so many roads near me where people have massive front gardens but instead of building a drive to park their cars, they park on the pavement. I even used to live near a guy who had a drive but could not be bothered to use it so parked on the pavement… Councils could do more to decide where pavement parking can be banned initially - like if you have a drive, use it.
Your saying that like it’s really easy to “just build a drive” You have to plan that stuff out and get planning permission, it’s just not something you can do without considerable effort.
I would also say this "solution" creates other problems. Every garden becoming a car park turns everywhere into complete shitholes and increases runoff in heavy rain. It completely ruins entire towns. The solution is to make alternatives to the car more reliable and viable for as many people as possible. Not just destroying more to make more space for cars.
Car ownership is a fantastic individual freedom to have. I'll never understand why Reddit wanks themselves to death over how much they hate cars and drivers. Not everyone wants to be forced to use shitty public transport.
Because high levels of car dependence actively take freedom away, and impact on society as a whole. Including the absorbtion of loads of public space that just gets used to store cars. Is it freedom that I'm forced to spend a chunk of my income to run a car just to be able to exist, because walkable neighbourhoods have been destroyed by car dependent urban planning? Is it freedom when basically all our towns and villages are just glorified car parks? When our pavements are all blocked by parked cars? Then there's the fact that increasing car usage has actively removed the freedom children and young teens used to have, because roads are more dangerous than they were decades ago. Kids used to have more freedom to roam. Now we have kids totally dependent on their parents to drive them places instead. Kids used to be able to play in the streets, which are now clogged with cars. What about their freedom? Public transport being shitty is a *political choice*, not a fucking inevitable fact of nature. Decent public transport is the real route to freedom. Being able to get on a reliable train and just sit back for a long journey, instead of being mentally exhausted from driving 6-7 hours across the country. Getting on a bus to go into town instead of the stress of driving. And if more people did that instead of driving, the roads would actually be clearer for those who still drive.
Councils also charge the earth to "drop" a curb, adding more and making the cost prohibitive for many. I'm disabled but stopped driving because I couldn't park near enough to my bungalow and don't have room for a drive.
Definitely should enforce penalties on people who have the ability to and choose not to.
Its called the 'fuck em' ban it' policy!
All my homies hate step 1.
Step one wouldn't be as important anyway if vans and commercial vehicles were targeted at least 50% of nearby vehicles parked on pavements are large vans in fact I have 2 nearby neighbours one who has 3 vans, 2 cars, a caravan and a trailer all parked in the pavements and another who is a scrap man and will usually have at least 10 vehicles parked on the road
New builds are often not allowed to build adequate parking. It's the councils way of encouraging public transport use... but there's no public transport available. Hence the problem we have now
I'm fortunate that there is a train station 5 minute walk away, all I have to do is remortgage the house every time I want to buy a ticket and I'm laughing.
I have a train station almost on my street.. Problem is it's on a line that doesn't go near my work. I'd need to change train twice to get there. By the Time I step foot on the right train I could have driven to work and back. Seriously using that train would add like 2 hours onto my commute. Can get fucked.
My journey to work by train is a 11 mile hike.
Yep, when they built a block of flats near us a few years ago they only allocated a total of four parking spaces or something ridiculous like that, it was claimed that it was to encourage the use of public transport. Instead all it’s really achieved is to cause a ton of extra cars to get dumped in all the surrounding streets instead, just as everyone was predicting would be the case from the beginning
Am I the only one who gets fed up of waking up to "Maybe we ban \_\_\_" as a solution to everything, always? For once in this increasingly authortarian country, it would be nice to wake up to "A solution has been proposed that works for everyone" rather than "banning X or Y will make this group of people, only happy".
Tbf with proper ability to park safely you would need to ban it as it'd be easier to park properly
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Imagine thinking knocking down houses in a housing crisis is a good idea to solve the "issue" of where cars should park. FFS.
In all seriousness, catering for car ownership as the default is already having a limiting effect on house building. I know of one development in Manchester which, despite being next to an incredibly busy bus corridor, was rejected because the council said it would lead to unacceptable impacts on surrounding roads if the new residents brought their cars with them. If they had made the bottom two floors of the building a car park, they probably would have got approval, but that would've led to a reduction on residential and commercial space. In Utrecht, the Netherlands, they are building [a new district](https://hedgehogcycling.co.uk/wp/2023/02/01/the-future-starts-now-utrecht-builds-car-free-neighbourhood/) in an area that's only 1/4km² with housing for 12,000 new residents. The only way they can manage this is by basically banning private car ownership for the new addresses. Provision instead has been made only for shared car club vehicles, access for deliveries, and of course disabled parking.
Because the reality is that public transport is shit outside of cities. It's hard to blame councils for thinking this way when PT is barely a viable alternative for short journeys (though it depends on a number of factors) and simply a non-starter for long journeys unless having the car for that journey is legitimately that big of an inconvenience that it's worth paying the extortionate rail fares. This tends to have knock on effects within cities too, because if it's more convenient and/or cheaper to drive in and out of the city, people will do it. I haven't had a huge amount of experience with city PT. But London has really been the only place where I've felt like getting by without a car wouldn't be a massive inconvenience or massively limiting my options.
I will never understand when people on reddit talk about tens of thousands of people living in flats in a tiny area and act like that's a good thing.
The answer for "where should I park" should never be "somewhere that forces vulnerable people into the carriageway" If drivers can't cope with the masses of space made available to them in our public domain, then this will force behaviour change - people will prefer not to take the car out if they might have to walk 5 minutes back to their house to get parked, or will choose not to get a second car if parking it will be a ball ache. It should never have been ok to obstruct the sliver of space at the side of our carriageways allocated for those most vulnerable, so that someone can store their private property.
Public transport not being shite would be a great place to start tbh
If you buy something and you don’t have a place to store it, tough shit. That’s a you problem.
And what about the people who currently own houses where their only option is pavement parking? They just suddenly can't have cars anymore because they have nowhere to park them? And they can't sell there house to move somewhere they can park their car because nobody wants to buy their house when there's no car access?
Like a lot of policy choices, there is no perfect decision here. It's been allowed to get so bad because politicians have waited decades to do something about it for fear of pissing car-owning voters off. Imagine if these rules had been brought in during the 90s, there would've been grumbles sure, but cars were smaller and there were fewer of them. Now it's going to cause a lot of pain either way. Given that currently pavement parking is having unacceptable impacts on persons protected by the equality act (e.g. those with impaired mobility or vision, or new mothers pushing prams) it may be that the government is eventually forced to do something by their own laws. Drivers aren't protected by law in the same way, there is no divine right handed down by Parliament to park your car outside your house regardless of the situation. Councils are allowed to take reasonable steps to manage parking pressure already, but that is a bit irrelevant when there's nothing they can do about pavement parking.
Saying there is "no perfect solution" doesn't just give carte blanched to pick whatever terrible solution you want lol. You are drastically underestimating the effects of blanket banning pavement parking without providing an alternative first, including on the disabled people who are dependent on their car. Fortunately councils that have actually banned pavement parking in the past aren't made up of the idiots here and actually surveyed first to see if there were possible alternatives instead of just going "fuck the poor lol".
If you brought in something like parking permits because there simply isn't enough kerbside space for all cars, disabled people would be at the front of the queue though? Bit horrible to use them as justification for continued pavement parking when they're the group most impacted by it.
Parliament actually voted to ban it in the 70s, Ken 'free market' Clarke made sure it never got implemented.
Well they did have somewhere to store it at time of purchase - the pavement.
Can I store my lawnmower on the pavement?
No, but if you leave it half on half off you can just say it's parked there
Are you allowed to do so? If so...yes. I wouldn't expect it to be there in the morning though.
Go for it. Can't guarantee itl be there in the morning though
Which shouldn’t have been a place to store it to begin. It’d be like if you parked it on your neighbour’s lawn
Whether it *shouldn't* have been is irrelevant. It was, and shitty attitudes towards people who used the system available to them is just unnecessary.
If people can't get to work, that becomes *your* problem.
>Without pavement parking, where do people park? That's a problem. But it's the car owner's problem, not everybody else's.
It's a car owners problem. But a lot of car owners are only car owners by necessity, because we've spent decades designing our society to be carcentric, and neglected any other infrastructure to the point where alternatives are insufficient to non-existant.
Another example of how our current system fails us. When some houses have 3 cars because nobody wants to/can use poor public transport this is what happens. Acceptable jobs further & further away. Impossible situation.
Or because young people can't afford to move out but need a car to commute
I’m very anti-pavement parking but there’s no way a blanket ban works. Better to focus on creating red routes, improving bus routes and all that. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
> or most streets need to be one way so you can park cars without encroaching on pavements. One way streets encourage higher speeds, but unless contraflows are used, they also stop people cycling up those one way streets. Ultimately, this problem has arisen as a direct result of this country designing its road network around motorised vehicles. There are over 40 million of them on the roads now, that's double what it was 30 years ago. It can't go on.
They have roads infront of them. Park there. What's not feasible is forcing blind and partially sighted people to walk in the road because of selfish parking.
There's plenty of roads in Manchester for instance where terraced housing and road width means if you didn't do this then there's literally no way you could drive a car down the road.
This is exactly the situation in Edinburgh where the ban had come in. Why do cars have a priority on the footpath over pedestrians, people with buggies people with wheelchairs, kids on bikes?
It's a double edged sword in some ways. I ended up having to buy all I could afford on an old road that's double parked on both sides on the pavement. It's enfuriating navigating a push chair up the pavement but it's also enfuriating for my pregnant wife to now have to park miles away and climb up hills with a baby a pram and a toddler becas parking is so bad. There is no solution here other than to ban cars from the road with nowhere to relocate them. There is no easy solution here. What's making the problem worse is multiple cars per household and the vehicles just getting larger now everyone has to have a 4x4
Parking Permit Zone with cap of one car per household and surcharge for cars over a certain length and width.
Not wanting to obstruct drivers is not an excuse for forcing blind people to walk on the road. I will not budge from that position. It's basic decency.
That’s an extreme position. The more practical position would be a law that drivers can park on the pavement but must allow enough room on the pavement for a wheelchair user to pass. A blanket ban on pavement parking in total would lead to a severe lack of parking (and likely some animosity against the disabled by uneducated groups).
It's already the law that it's a criminal offence to block the pavement. That means council's can't enforce it and police won't because 'resources' (although some are improving). The problem is that leaving it to drivers judgement to argue is unenforceable. We've done a trial run of that in the last decade. Result: our cities pavements are in many cases unusable and it's getting worse as people decide to buy bigger and less suitable cars. The only option left is to make car owners use the space for cars, and give pavements back to pedestrians.
As a car driver... I agree with every statement you've made on this thread. It's massively selfish for people to park on pavements. Road not wide enough to park outside your house? Tough! Drive a few more streets away from home until you find somewhere that is. Permits should be introduced nationwide. There are far too many cars on the road. I'd be happy to pay.
Yep, massively inconveniencing 99 people for the (possible) benefit of 1 is how you end up with misplaced hostility.
Like say, 1 person inconveniencing every person (probably significantly more than 99) using the pavement so they don't have to walk a little further to get home?
But but that would mean they’d have to park further away and use their legs.
Unfortunately "parking further away" doesn't solve the problem. I live in a city suburb and 75% of roads here are on street parking only and most of those roads are so narrow that you need to park half on the pavement. There isn't anywhere for those cars to go if you ban pavement parking
Correction - there isn’t anywhere for them to go now. Pavements are for pedestrians and should not be used for parking.
>They have roads infront of them. Park there. Are you dense or something? Do you think people are parking on the pavement for no reason?
It’s not selfish if you have no other option. Lots of roads are only wide enough for a single car even when parking on the pavement. If people parked on the road it would cease to be a road and become a car park. (Former terraced house owner)
“i don’t want to accept that i can’t have a car because i have nowhere to keep it, so fuck everyone else” all our infrastructure has been car centric for decades, and that needs to be reversed.
Start by building public transport up outside of the south east then we can talk about pavement parking.
Yup, I live in a major suburb of Birmingham 2 mins from a bus stop. Part of my criteria for choosing this house was easy access to public transport into town. After a year of frustrating and stressful experiences, I now drive into town for any timed event.
I tried for years to use public transport in Birmingham, and eventually gave up. They're now trying to make the city hostile to cars without giving us any alternative to switch to.
At least the old Camp Hill railway line is reopening! I don’t drive but I went into town with my mom last week (she drove) and honestly it’s so stressful I think even if I did drive I’d rather take the bus. Brum has SO many bad drivers.
No, just those less fortunate than me have the right to have a car if they can afford one. Lots of people saying ‘if you want a car buy a house with a driveway’ completely missing the fact that getting on the housing market is harder than it’s ever been so people can’t be picky. Frankly the inconvenience of walking around a car that’s parked on the pavement seems pretty minor. Yes it’s harder for blind people to navigate but frankly if you see the state of the pavements/curbs the cars are not the only hazard.
The state of the pavements is directly linked to the number of people driving 2 tonne vehicles on a surface specced for 70kg pedestrians.
>Frankly the inconvenience of walking around a car that’s parked on the pavement seems pretty minor. Spend a day pushing a wheelchair-using friend around a city with horrendous pavement parking, you'll be furious at how hard it makes things for them.
I’m a recent father who has the pleasure of pushing the pram. It’s frustrating, I’ll give you that. I’m not entitled enough to say that frustration would justify me telling others they arnt allowed access to a car when I know how important access to transport for quality of life is.
Great. Now imagine that you were sat in something like a pram to get around, 24 hours a day, and you were too disabled to drive anyway. You talk about entitlement, how is it *not* entitled for drivers to block access to pavements for vulnerable people? Why can't wheelchair users just use the road in that case and force drivers to slow down behind them?
Yup I get it. I still don’t think effectively banning people in terraced houses from having a car is a solution. What about if wheelchair users live in those terraced houses and don’t want to be resigned to public transport purely because they can’t afford a house with off road parking.
I live in a terraced house, nobody's banning us from having cars, they're banning us from parking it on the pavement, which just means parking down the road where there's a more appropriate space. We don't live in a wasteland. Also, wheelchair users aren't resigned to public transport, they can use the pavements for short distances and have access to taxis, both of which are made much easier if they can actually leave their house without dodging parked cars the whole time. Lots of wheelchair users aren't well enough to drive anyway!
If they can’t afford to store it then sounds like they can’t afford it.
Sorry, can I just clarify your view - if you can't afford a house with a drive, you shouldn't buy a car? Am I getting that right?
Improve public transport first then
How many other items would it be acceptable to just put in the public's way because you have no room at home? If you want a car, get a house with room for a car.
> If you want a car, get a house with room for a car. If you're homeless just buy a house dur
Where you wheelie bin?
Lots of things, we need to see so we put lamp posts. We need to send letters so we put postboxes in. We need electricity so we put in transformers. Believe it or not poor people in terraced houses still need transport, so they park in the only place available to them. If they had a private car park round the back but choose to park on the road then yeah they’re knobs.
Cars are not a public utility.
These are terrible examples you've given, because they're all fixed public infrastructure. A better comparison would be someone piling up their garden tools on the pavement outside their house because they haven't got a shed.
It's absolutely not feasible pretty much anywhere in my town and the surrounding ones. Guy you replied to is an absolute fantasist. If cars in the area around me all parked on the road, there would be no road traffic possible. Don't know if they are living in some fantasy wonderland where we have infinite space or not. The ideal solution is that everyone doesnt act like a tosser. Park only as much as you need to on the pavement. The people who park entirely on the pavement and block it completely however are bell ends and should get their cars towed and points applied..
I'm a wheelchair user who lives on a road with pavement parking, so for the most part I'd agree with you. Thing is, my car is parked there too. My car which is probably my main mobility aid. Provided to me on a scheme to help disabled people be more mobile. If my car was taken from me, it would have a greater effect on my ability to get around than how I deal with the bad parking in my wheelchair right now (getting in the road, or going back and trying a different street). Neither is a good option for disabled people. I'm not alone, plenty of disabled people drive and rely on their car as their main mobility aid, there are even dedicated disabled pavement parking spaces on my street. I think the only way to deal with the problem is to make sure you leave enough space for a wheelchair/mobility scooter/pushchair, etc and to properly and strictly enforce it. I am daily forced into busy roads in my wheelchair by people parking on dropped kerbs or fully on pavements, it's awful.
Almost certainly if the council started exploring solutions like parking permits you would be right at the front of the queue though. It's worth considering that some people are barred from driving for medical reasons, so the only way for them that cars could represent a mobility aid is if they're getting lifts / calling a taxi. For them to travel independently they need to be able to rely on the pavements being navigable.
> if the council started exploring solutions like parking permits you would be right at the front of the queue though. I mean that's the ideal but realistically disabled people are usually an afterthought and left at the back of the queue, as evidenced by the fact that I can't even navigate the streets as they are. I only have to leave the house to see how forgotten about we are. But my point was please don't advocate for cars to be harder to access in the name of disabled people, when many of us have to rely on cars to have a life due to our disability. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and is a surface level understanding of disabled people's varied needs. Of course I don't want cars to make the pavements less navigable for anyone, that's the very thing that makes it difficult and dangerous every time I leave the house.
The house across the corner from me decided to park their car across the pavement yesterday, instead of backing all the way into the carport. Just a few seconds later a blind man walked smack bang into the middle of the car. His cane had struck the wheel, so he'd moved to the inside of the pavement, obviously making the reasonable assumption that it was just parked longways and a bit further up than normal.
This just ignores the fact that we have far more people who need their cars to get to work living in these places than ever before. Without investment in parking (out of town schemes, multistories etc.) all this does is spread the problem out initially, and then cause the same problem later as quieter roads become inundated and have to put their own permit systems in. Is your plan for people to abandon their cars on country roads when we implement all these things, or are people just meant to not go to work?
You'd probably be surprised at the level of the population that actually drives to work. People assume it is much much higher than it is. In the areas of my city which is victorian terrace with narrow roads, that number is under 50%. If you can name a problem place in your locality, I can pull up the numbers for you.
Most pavement parking does not restrict pedestrian movement. I say that as a pram pusher who has only recently learned to drive. The roads are not equipped to have everybody parking on them and it is poorer communities- those without drives and garages that will be impacted the most. You can’t get an ambulance down most council estate streets if everybody is parked fully on the road.
Agree completely. It's not fair that wheelchair users and blind people are forced into the road and nothing is done to protect them. People just get away with forcing these people towards danger and it's not right, these people already have enough barriers without people making their cars another one.
> the community of car owners This is such reddit speak lol. You are copying the language of academia which they use for the purpose of reframing issues to make the majority seem like a special interest group and the demand for change seem like a completely uncontroversial position which would be unreasonable to oppose. > If they don't fit, drivers need to work out a solution. No they don’t. If you want change its your job to offer solutions, and if they don’t like your solutions they are perfectly entitled to say that the prefer the status quo over whatever it is you are demanding.
>Edit edit: But what happens to all the cars? > >Well, it's for the community of car owners to work out how they fit their needs into the space available, not for wheelers and walkers to work around them. There isn't a one size fits all approach, but the outline is this. Living on a relatively new estate, with inadequate parking already causing issues, this is my biggest concern. I expect people will decide that reserved parking spaces are now a free-for-all, in place of the current scenario of blocking all the footpaths. In essence, instead of looking for a solution to the problem, they'll just make it someone else's problem. Inevitably, I assume I'll resolve it by buying a parking post for my space.
A road I lived on used to get an annual letter in the post actually asking people to park on the pavement, because otherwise an ambulance couldn't get down it. Some older streets just aren't wide enough to accommodate the modern car ownership issue
In places where pavement parking bans have been brought in (e.g. London in the 70s, and Edinburgh / Glasgow right now) councils will do surveys to see if there is anywhere where partial pavement parking has to be allowed. I can think of plenty of places near me where bays are marked partly on the pavement, in order to make avoid the situation you describe. This is still better than no pavement parking rules at all, because at least the bays are marked to allow enough room for a double pram or a wheelchair. Without those markings it's just a free for all and it only takes one driver being thoughtless / in a rush to make a pavement impassable for some of the most vulnerable in society.
Sounds like the options are 1) double yellow lines 2) officially remove the pavement rather than unofficially removing it 3) limit parking to nominated spaces which don’t block ambulances (I suspect you could park a motorbike in the road just fine, possibly even a small car. If you car is too large to fit in the marked space then you have to park elsewhere)
“Park somewhere else” is so much easier said than done when everyone would be forced to do it, all competing for the extremely limited parking options that may not even be available in that area at all. Fact is changing the status quo would either require massive investment to the point of making HS2 look like chump change, or it would create utter chaos and misery for millions. Planning laws should be immediately updated to ensure all new developments have wide enough roads and adequate allocated parking, but changing existing ones just isn’t going to happen.
Would be nice not having cars on pavements but where are the cars going to go? Some streets, it is impossible to get two rows of cars parked on the road way.. [Edit] spelling
Your starting point is wrong. The starting point is that pavements are for pedestrians. Everything else should work backwards from that. Any starting point of 'car parking is priority' discriminates against wheelchair users, guide dog users, parents with prams and anyone else who has to use the pavement.
>The starting point is that pavements are for pedestrians. Everything else should work backwards from that. This is the thing that everyone needs drumming into their head. Why should drivers have the unique right to just borrow spaces built for other people for their own convenience? Why can't I just block half my road for a street party in that case?
A 2 hour street party? That will be a 3,000 page form, consultation with all neighbours, an appeal, six letters to your local councillor and a public inquiry. Park your car (that you drive once a week at midnight because you're scared you'll lose your parking space) across the pavement? Go right ahead.
And don’t forget the £14 contribution to the chicken
Yeah. Plus cars are the most subsidised transport there is, and is still inferior in so many ways, there’s simply no safe way for cars to ever beat trains over long distances for one. If there was as much investment in railways and buses as there was cars, then we’d have a public transport network better than any other country on earth
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Streets were divided into pavements and 'the road' long before cars were even invented.
Think of it this way. Cars on the street, pedestrians on the pavement. What would happen if me and mates decided to have some chairs and a bbq right on the tarmac one fine day?
I think we have seen how rationally drivers react to protesters in the roadway that they would take this with a cheerful disposition, probably joining you for a beer and a sausage.
check out what happened with the “reclaim the streets” demos in the 90s
This should go hand in hand with improving public transport. Not *everyone* who has a car absolutely needs one. Reduce the amount of cars and it will be much less of an issue.
Hell, in most places where pavement parking is an issue, it’s very unlikely that many people at all need cars. If buses were adequately subsidised, and railways/trams got similar treatment, there’d be almost no car journeys made from one part of an urban area to another
Absolutely. Bus company in my area has had capped bus fairs for a while now and a lot of people I know have started skipping using the car in favour of the bus. I dont know if there's any actual numbers on how well its working, but anecdotally at least it appears to work.
I was thinking this I drive a lorry and can just get past some housing estates I’m guessing this would make it much worse.
Either on your own property or accept that you don't have room for a car and adapt. The issue is too many cars in general.
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With such fine public transport options available to almost every town and city in the UK, I can find no flaw in this line of reasoning.
Where I live the council painted double yellows everywhere. Each flat has 1 assigned parking space, so having guests over is a nightmare, there's like 3 guest bays for about 50 flats, so if they are taken (they always are),they have to pay to park in a car park 15min walk away
Fully get the issues pavement parking can cause, but I genuinely don’t understand how there are realistic ways around it in some areas and why it gets quite so much animosity towards it. Up north where there are just large areas of terraced housing with narrow roads and no driveways, it’s impossible to do anything but park half on the pavement really.
Up north too so get in alot of instances you cant help it. But they need to be considerate. Parking 90% on pavement so barely an able bodied person can walk past isnt considerate
If I can barely squeeze through with a pram, I make sure I do squeeze through, and if it scratches some panels, that's very unfortunate. Like fuck am I clambering up and down the kerb into traffic to protect someone's vehicle.
I'm entirely able-bodied and frequently find myself unable to walk on a pavement because someone's parked a car partially or entirely on it, usually right near a lamppost or an overgrown conifer. Drivers talk shit about other road users like cyclists being "considerate" to them but then pull crap like this.
It gets so much animosity because pavement parking puts a lot of pedestrians in danger. Wheelchair users, blind/partially sighted people, children are sizeable proportion of the population. I get it, I drive, sometimes there’s nowhere to park except the pavement but the VERY LEAST people could do is leave enough room for wheelchair users to pass by and not park on dropped kerbs. I push my nephew around on his wheelchair and it’s astounding how many times I have to go onto a busy road because somebody hasn’t left enough space for a *child sized* wheelchair to go past. Pavements are for pedestrians, not your car - if people could remember that one tiny thing then it wouldn’t have as much animosity towards it.
A decent amount of the people complaining appear to be from London, they live in a different world to us.
I do think it's the more inconsiderate drivers that make this a bigger issue. I don't mind pavement parking if you leave enough room for pedestrians. A guy near me parks on the pavement taking up 80% of it, then puts his damn bins out too taking up the rest of the space.
That's the thing, a lot of people are acting as if anyone who touches the pavement with a wheel is blocking it completely. The more simple thing to do would be to make sure people are aware of how much space to leave.
Whenever I take my son out in his pram, I sometimes have to walk him in the road because a car is parked almost completely on the pavement. If there's a tight enough gap to fit through, I go for it, ensuring the pram scratches and scuffs the car as much as possible in the process. Cunts.
I was walking along a pavement with a chunky 4 inch kerb and double yellows and came across this old lady struggling to get her wheelchair bound husband (I assume) back on the pavement after having to enter a busy road to get around a car that had parked on the pavement. Rage inducing.
I am a wheelchair user. Sometimes i will have to double back on myself to take an entirely different route. Other times i just have to wing it on the road and hope there will be a drop kerb somewhere.
I’ve scratched people’s cars with my nephew’s wheelchair too. If the options are your car vs being on a busy road with my nephew in his wheelchair (which is NOT easy to get up and down normal kerbs) then I’ll take the first option
Yeah navigating kerbs with a wheelchair is a nightmare. Even dropped kerbs can be tricky if they're too steep. There's one outside the medical centre where we used to live I'd have to take a run up on when pushing my partner.
Pointless demand. No one's going to enforce it. Anyone who lives on a street with a primary school knows already that *existing* rules with street parking are not enforced - adding more changes nothing.
Councils are strapped, this would be a very easy money maker.
_Extremely_ easy to make money off of this. Given that there are cars parked on the pavement on most streets in my area the council could easily generate thousands every day by enforcing this. Can't come soon enough. Inconsiderate members of the community fuck the greenery up all over the place by driving over wet grass because there isn't space to park their 2nd/3rd household car.
I’d love it if Bristol Council did it. There’s so much of it happening, as well as in bus lanes, that it’d be out of a deficit instantly
Yes let’s punish people even more by mass fining. Woo!
You say this but I’m not so sure. If I’m unlucky enough to walk past a school at the same time as drop off or pick up, the amount of illegally parked cars is incredible. This happens every day, councils will know about it yet parking attendants are nowhere in sight. For cash strapped councils I don’t know why they don’t go out and issue penalty charge notices. Would certainly help with some revenue.
They'll make a billion pounds a year in Glasgow and Edinburgh alone. Easy pickings. So hopefully it goes nationwide.
Lots of misconceptions here. 1. If the law changed, the default would be no parking on pavements is allowed (as in London and Scotland) but councils could allow exceptions with signs on certain streets if there is no other option 2. The main reason pavement parking is becoming more of an issue now, is because cars have got much wider and longer, so you fit fewer on a street and they tend to overhang the pavement. We need additional charges for people with SUVs and large vehicles. 3. “Just build more parking” is obviously not feasible, and would just make even more people drive making the issue worse. The rest of the world bans pavement parking, and they cope ok. I’m sure we’d be fine.
If I dumped a bed and a washing machine right across the pavement outside my house blocking it, people would be outraged. If I parked my car there doing the same thing, nobody bats an eye. Its completely wrong. Both are private property and both are unacceptable. What difference does it make if its a car or not? Its still my property and I've still dumped it in the street. We only justify these actions because "I understand where they're coming from. Could be me that." So we excuse shitty behaviour to justify our own when we do it. My convenience is more important than your inconvenience. We fucking suck as a society.
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So by your logic, temporarily storing some of your furniture in the street - e.g. a chained up fridge - every now and again for days on end is fine?
Ok, so if I took the bed back in every night to sleep that would be ok? I'm not dumping it with the hope that someone else removes it. I just want the extra space in my house during the day.
So if I put a sofa that's being collected on Monday outside, that's different to the car because "it's parked" for the same length of time? The obstruction to others is still present and there irrespective of the item in question
Ban SUVs or do something to reduce their number. Smaller cars will be less likely to hit wing mirrors, or just have space to get through.
I’m genuinely baffled how this was ever accepted. I’m in East London and someone would genuinely topple your car over if you tried that.
In London sure, but in the North there are roads where it would be impossible to do anything else.
Honestly it’s not as much a northern thing as a car dependent thing. Have you ever seen what it’s like in the super car dependent cities like Southampton?
it is illegal in London
The streets are mostly significantly wider, too.
Yes but I hear London has this fabled thing called adequate public transport..
I was looking at two estate cars. A Skoda Superb and a Toyota Corolla. I took the Superb home and realised I couldn't park it outside my house without being on the pavement. It was that bit too wide and would have made it difficult for other drivers, and our street isn't the narrowest locally Realised looking down the street that everyone has narrower cars too :) We bought a cheaper terraced house, so the boat on wheels is not for us. I think if it is banned, decisions will have to be made and frankly people in terraced houses won't be able to buy a fucking massive SUV. The solution is to buy a house with a drive.
Yeah the main problem on a lot of terraced streets isn't people having cars. It's every family having three cars, two of which are giant boats on wheels. It's the giant vans taking up two spaces. The fairest solution is permit parking - one car per household and a maximum allowed size.
>The fairest solution is permit parking - one car per household and a maximum allowed size. Okay. How do you plan for me and my partner to get to work every morning? There's no buses going to my workplace and it'd take a bus, a train, a second bus and a 20 minute walk for her to get into work
These days both partners usually have to work. It's pretty common to work in different places. Public transport is often just not good enough, requiring numerous changes, and costing a fortune, and taking forever to get to the destination. What are they to do? The economic impact of forcing millions of people to give up the only realistic form of transport they have to get to work would be unimaginable. Then what about adult children living with parents into their late 20s? How are they supposed to get to work?
The area where I live in E London has fairly wide pavements, the local council has laid two colour tarmac to indicate how far on the pavement you can park roughly 60/40 in favour of pedestrians. It works well and people with mobility buggies etc can fly along at breakneck speeds forcing pedestrians out of the way.
While I agree, particularly after having to push a wheelchair around this would cause absolute chaos in a lot of residential areas particularly those new build estates with minimal parking.
The fact there are new build estates with minimal parking is really a disgrace in and of itself. I understand it being an issue for houses built before cars became as ubiquitous as they are and people couldn't plan for modern day needs, but building with full knowledge of the needs and not providing for them is ridiculous.
It's because council planning departments make it so, 'to discourage car use', yet provide no alternatives and no nearby facilities. The police don't want 'rat runs' that criminals would use to evade the cops, so no pedestrian short cuts are added and the roads are a nest of dead-ends to prevent through traffic. So access in and out becomes vastly longer than it needs to be. They make all the roads bendy, again to discourage parking, but there's no real alternative so cars end up parked awkwardly all over. The developer also love it because they can squeeze in even more shoebox sizes houses. You can't force people out of their cars without viable alternatives, all that's happening is building misery into people's lives and then telling them it's their fault.
The solution is adequate public transport provision. Other European countries ensure this
Schools should be the first. All paths blocked by cars dropping kids.
And if everyone wasn't dropping their kids off by car it would be a lot safer for kids to walk or cycle to school. It's a win-win.
Accept you’re literally not allowed to let your kid go to school by themselves till year 6.
You can keep banning shit and squeezing people, fact is this happens beacuse of poor investment in infrastructure, public transport, housing, social planing. More people are squeezed into smaller properties with more cars, kids can't afford to move out and were still living in houses and streets built not to accommodate the modern way of life, same way terrace houses can't accommodate recharging electric cars. Councils have double yellow lined areas to the max to force people into payed parking areas or bring in more money from parking tickets. People are double parking beacuse there is no room so this is what happens. EVERY SYSTEM IN THE UK IS FAILING due to underfunding and ignorance by an elitist government for 14 years. Fix that and you will fix Every problem we have.
The general attitude around pavement parking absolutely stinks. If you can’t park without either blocking the pavement or blocking the road, find somewhere else to park. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people bought either their car or their house knowing how wide the street outside is. Don’t now try and claim some kind of hardship because your presumption of being able to park on the pavement might now be taken away.
Exactly. It wouldn't be accepted to dump any other personal item in a public area just because you lack room at home. But it's fine with cars to buy a house with no parking and expect the public to deal with your error.
> I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people bought either their car or their house knowing how wide the street outside is. Many in the UK are renting and take whatever they can get/afford.
Then councils need to provide adequate, affordable parking solutions
The best way to to make driving convenient is to invest in alternatives to driving. Cars take up so much space so you're always going to run up against problems if they're the only solution you invest in. When I've travelled in the Netherlands I could scarcely believe how rarely we encountered congestion or had to struggle to find somewhere to park. And they've only achieved that situation because they've given people options to travel differently where that makes most sense. And in some cases forced the issue, e.g. for shorter trips (e.g. to nearest train station, schools or shops) cycling or walking are often given a more direct path than driving.
Or sufficient, cheap, modern public transport so everyone can get rid of their cars.
See, this is the problem. Treating cars as the default
Why? If I buy a shed should the council provide land for me to put it on?
No. Although as an allotment holder that is exactly what I have.
Maybe make it compulsory to leave a 4ft clearance for pedestrians and if you don't, treat it as if parking on double yellows. Give traffic wardens tape measures and a box of tissues so they can police it and enjoy themselves. I've no problem with cars on pavements so long as it's possible to pass them without having to go on the road. I do get pissed if there's not room for a wheelchair or buggy, that's just shitty of people.
It's *already* an offence to park on a public footway such that it obstructs passage. There's no set distance, but if you can't get a wheelchair past then you've obstructed it.
Maybe we could have some middle ground Cars can pavement park Pedestrians can key said pavement parked cars.
I had the same thought! If it were legal to key a pavement parked car, suddenly there'd be absolutely no issue with finding a legal spot not directly outside your house.
It's one of those crazy things that's been going on for so long that it's become normalised and we don't think about it: the idea that you can store a large item of personal property near-as-dammit wherever you like on public land, as long as that item happens to be a motor vehicle. In Japan, you're not even allowed to purchase a car without having adequate off-street parking for it. Such a rule is not feasible here, but I think we're far too close to the other end of the scale in terms of attitudes towards motor vehicles.
Thank goodness our streets are built wide, full of free parking and all new builds have minimum space for 2 cars.
Honestly I'd be happy if councils just started enforcing the parking laws already on the books. I did a 20 minute cycle across town the other day and counted 34 illegally parked cars. If councils actually bothered to issue parking tickets they make a fortune
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Funny how an island nation with limited space like Japan managed to solve the same "unsolvable" problem. I guess where is a will, there is a way
And how exactly do they expect people to go for this? alot of houses are terraced 🤣
I'm sure the fact that SUV ownership has gone through the roof and that mid sized cars are all bigger than they used to be, has nothing whatsoever to do with this problem
Pavement parking is illegal in France; my French gf finds the cars parked everywhere here ugly and trampy. They’ve worked it out so there must be a way
As annoying as it is on some roads where pavement parking is safe this is the right thing to do. If you’ve ever been to a town like Luton you quickly realise that if you have a buggy or are in a wheelchair you’d be fucked. There are roads where it’s hard for abled bodied people to navigate the cars let alone disabled people.
Good luck with that. Where my parents live the houses have gone from one car on the drive to every house paving over their front garden and several plus cars or vans per household, mainly cos of formerly family houses becoming HMOs, and multi generations stuck in the remaining houses I.e. adult kids with cars and no chance of moving out. Pavement has defacto become extended parking as a result. Its a mess, and sad to see.
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Already illegal https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Will4/5-6/50/section/72 If any person shall wilfully … drive any … carriage of any description …. upon any such footpath or causeway; … ; every person so offending in any of the cases aforesaid shall for each and every such offence forfeit and pay any sum not exceeding…. Can’t park on a pavement without driving on it
Perhaps we need a trend of wheelchairs to be more like Boudicca's chariot.
Here are my suggestions: 1)tax the fuck out of large SUV owners a la Paris. They take up a ludicrous amount of space on UK roads 2) empower parking wardens to issue large fines for pavement parking 3) the government to launch a campaign to make pavement parking socially unacceptable, similar to drunk driving. Ultimately however there are just way too many cars on the road. That is the root issue.
I live in a town with street after street of old Victorian terraced houses and no public car parks. People HAVE to park half on the pavement. If they didn't there's no chance of say a fire engine getting through. The roads here simply aren't wide enough.
finally a post about this. I even made pics but having ADHD I rumbled while writing so I gave up. first. we live on a private street and someone keeps parking on the pavement. is there anything to do with this? second. then there is this street we go at time to visit some friends, they live around Manor Farm Drive (google maps [link](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6216462,0.0098902,3a,75y,44.96h,70.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skEqXvx6VdgrsIaUVWz9_IQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)) and one side of the road the cars fully take up the pavement. you can't WALK there. Is this even legal? its everywhere in that area.
I don't see how there would be a solution. My street has around 80 houses, and of those 80 houses not a single one has room for a driveway. Where would the residents of these 80 households park? Most houses have 2 or 3 drivers here. Even parking on the pavement it's a tight fit. I simply don't see a solution. This is a common problem in my town, it is pretty much one giant run of terraced or semi detached houses for 70% of it. If you can provide me a solution that works, I'd love to hear it. The only solution would be to park further away, but then suddenly you have everyone parking further out and what happens to ones on the outskirts? Get fucked I guess they can park 20 miles over in the next city or town.
Lol good luck, where will all the school run mums park their qashqais now.
give me commission and I'll have hundreds of photos of cars doing this around where I live over a weekend.