https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49635176
This won't be feasible everywhere.
No it certainly won't be. Sadly, for too long, our planning regs and enforcement policies/regimes have been pathetic, encouraging people to do as they please.
Councils rarely do anything, private developments rarely have the money to themselves (mine doesn't - private doesn't equal rich, just that the roads aren't [sometimes deliberately] adopted by the local Council) and often rely on often useless private parking firms. Sadly, just another symtom of our 'managing decline' society in action (or maybe that should be a lack of action) - often because those in charge don't want to incur the ire (especially if they are elected by the same people) of local residents, a large minority of whom now routinely break parking rules/laws and are used to getting away with it.
It's an ongoing/uphill battle on the development where I live and am a Resident Director - many newer developments such as mine are both near stations, have reduced residents' parking anyway compared to older ones (changes in regulations for developements when built), often due to smaller plot sizes for homes (less space for front gardens and driveways) and have little on-road parking for visitors, especially when that's combined with narrower streets, all designed to pack in as many properties as humanly possible to make the developer and builder more £££ and get the Council more taxes with reduced outlays (unadopted roads means no money spent on road repairs, maintenance of street lights and furniture, communal parks, etc.
Lovely little schemes. Trouble is, very few of us can afford to pay 25-40% more or even have the choice of owning a property with sufficient parking. All the flats on my development have just one allocated space each, even for 2-bed flats, most houses (2, 3, 4 & 5 bed) have just two spaces each, some only one (including a good number of 4 bed houses).
When children grow up, where do they park their car? Or when your significant other moves in and you live in a flat? In this case, outside the development on someone else's road, one that doesn't have council permit schemes. Everyone gets peed off, some people get their cars vandalised for 'taking' others 'spaces', including off the development. All because of incompetent decisions made, money and power. And residents always expect everyone else to resolve their problems and don;'t want to get involved (too much trouble).
Lovely country we live in at the moment. Rant over.
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Underground parking never seems to have taken off in a big way in Britain, and I can't for the life of me see why. New homes with car parking space(s) either at ground level or underground, with the home built on top, are much more space-efficient. I say "home", as 90% of them will inevitably be houses, since, again, flat dwelling in Britain is still looked down on. Commonhold was supposed to replace feudal, antiquated leasehold but that has just not happened.
The front garden is quite a curious concept. In the book "Watching the English", Katie Fox makes the point that a front garden is never for sitting out in; it is a kind of display. I think it is more of a barrier, pushing neighbours and passers-by a bit further away: "Come, look at my lawn/flowers, etc. but do not approach", "An Englishman's home is a castle", etc.
Of course, when - inevitably - front gardens are turned over to a gravel drive in an attempt to accommodate the house's increasing motor pool, the tut-tutting starts.
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"On the drive" is also a strange British term, when it is used to describe the 20' x 8' paved area in front of a suburban semi, (rather than the approach to Chatsworth for instance).
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Underground parking never seems to have taken off in a big way in Britain, and I can't for the life of me see why. New homes with car parking space(s) either at ground level or underground, with the home built on top, are much more space-efficient. I say "home", as 90% of them will inevitably be houses, since, again, flat dwelling in Britain is still looked down on. Commonhold was supposed to replace feudal, antiquated leasehold but that has just not happened.
The front garden is quite a curious concept. In the book "Watching the English", Katie Fox makes the point that a front garden is never for sitting out in; it is a kind of display. I think it is more of a barrier, pushing neighbours and passers-by a bit further away: "Come, look at my lawn/flowers, etc. but do not approach", "An Englishman's home is a castle", etc.
Of course, when - inevitably - front gardens are turned over to a gravel drive in an attempt to accommodate the house's increasing motor pool, the tut-tutting starts.
Underground parking adds a significant amount to the build cost (including significantly higher structural costs and for additional thermal and acoustic insulation, and thus the price a buyer pays. Even worse for UG car parks for flat blocks, which will need to be lit 24/7, likely be gated for security reasons (and perhaps have CCTV) and maybe even have fire/smoke deterction and smoke removal systems, which are VERY expensive and I believe have to be tested annually.
Ground level car parking areas with the flats over them can also be expensive, because it means only two floors worth of flats can be built above without needing lifts, which ARE increadibly expensive to buy/install and again need annual maintenance & inspections, additional buildings insurance and money put aside every year for eventual replacement (and also attract vandalism), which puts up the annual service charges, often by over 25%. Both that and the building frontages looking not so nice means they often are less attractive to buyers.
Not so bad if construction costs are low. Not in this country. A shame, at least for UG car parking, if designed properly and safely. TBH, new build properties are packed way too tight these days, and have very little amenity space like gardens, patios, car parking.
I find that the best in that regard were 'middle calss' housing from the early part of the last century ('bay windowed' housing when cars started to become more common oustide of just stately homes) up until the mid 1970s. Later than that, houses (and flats) started getting smaller again, apart from a few top-end ones, especially small-scale builds which were better quality than the McHomes.
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Or when your significant other moves in and you live in a flat?
My late Mother lived in a development where planning permission was one car per flat. Of 24 flats in development some were bought 'off plan' as buy to let. Others found there way into same market when original owners sold out or died. In that circumstance it's down to purchaser/landlord to recognise the limitation.
Arguably same goes if your girl/boy friend moves in - you know the rules.
More of a problem if she moves in able to use a bus service to get to work and the bus company overhaul the timetable at two weeks notice so that no longer works.
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The streetplan of the town I used to live in was mainly set out in the 19th Century. It's miraculous (either that or the result of astonishing foresight on the part of the planners) that so many of the minor roads were made wide enough for two cars to pass, let alone to pass when there are cars parked either side, IF many of those cars were parked with two wheels on the pavement. The age of our infrastructure needs to be taken into account when making policies such as the above, because if it isn't, then the parking wars we hear about will be ratcheted up to an unprecedented level.
As for the idea that introducing pavement parking bans will encourage people to use public transport rather than buying a car, that would require not only much better provision of public transport, but a massive change of culture and attitude which can only happen over several decades.
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If pavements are wider than necessary for pedestrian use, then make them narrower to allow more room for cars - otherwise parking on a pavement should be an absolute offence - the need for modern society to have more cars than parking spaces isn't sufficient reason to obstruct other users like pedestrians.
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Some cars drive too near the curb as it is without making the pavements narrower. Cars parked on the pavement for hours or days without use should be banned.
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Maybe we should apply the same "law" to parking spaces as to social events, where "there are not enough chairs", i.e. there are enough chairs, just too many backsides?
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Cars parked on the pavement for hours or days without use should be banned.
Banned ? Really? I guess you mean penalised in some way?
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Yes banned definition of verb " to officially or legally prohibit something" therefor it may follow that offenders would be penalised!
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As usual a sledgehammer fix for a nut problem. There is no one size fits all solution to most problems. Surely the local authorities are best placed to know their areas and effect some kind of solution that satisfies the most criteria. We are a cul-de-sac, built in the 50's and the road is quite narrow. Parking for those who don't or rather won't use the parking areas at the entrance, (which means a colossal 50 metre walk!!,) has to be off road. Pavement or grassed areas in front of houses. Useless in winter of course. Few houses can accommodate a garage so outside parking is the only option. As Avant points out, rubbish collection, deliveries etc etc are all required services. Fortunately everyone in the road is sensible and abides by the unwritten code of sensible parking so as not to obstruct or inconvenience neighbours. If the council did enforce such a policy it would be impossible for most people in our road and a lot in the village to find anywhere nearby to leave their cars. Luckily we can walk in the road because traffic is rare and slow. Different in towns and cities where another solution has to be found. Not an easy problem to solve.
Cheers Concrete
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"Everyone is sensible and abides by the unwritten code" - if only this idea could be expanded to cover, say, the whole world!
Cul-de-sacs do tend to have a greater sense of community, no doubt helped by the lowered stress of not having through traffic, with all the noise, pollution and accidents that brings. And unlike a conventional road, drivers don't tend to "dump" a car on a random pavement in a cul de sac in order to visit someone in a neighbouring street, or to make that all important trip to the cashpoint.
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Quite right Bilboman. We are fortunate in our location and with the neighbours too. We all get on and are therefore very considerate to each others needs. For instance when we are away we invite neighbours park on our drive for that period. Every little helps, as they say!
Cheers Concrete
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The street I live on is quite narrow and there are cars parked both sides. It is because of this that our last choice of car was a Honda Jazz, but i'm guessing there are a tiny minority who would make this kind of consideration. By far the majority of folks are much happier in a car far bigger than they actually need. Car manufacturers make successive new models bigger than their predecessors and while the length may not be a huge factor, the width, for roads like mine, is. They (the roads) are not getting any wider, so why are the cars?. Our Jazz, despite being the narrowest car in its class (along with the Yaris and Mazda 2) at 1695mm excluding mirrors, is around the same width as a 'family car' from the 80's or 90's, such as a Nissan Bluebird. By contrast, the new Renault Clio, a car in the same class as the Jazz (and almost certainly with less interior space), is 1798mm wide. Reading a roadtest of the new BMW X5 the other day and even the tester noted how wide the car was, and given how this is not the kind of thing normally mentioned, i guessed it must be excessive. Looked it up and found that it is 2004mm, 132mm wider than the original X5, which wasn't a 'petite' car.
The van i use for my work, a VW Caddy (1800mm wide), i park with the tyres on the pavement because of the problems on my street. But, i am very careful to just put the width of the tyre on the pavement (and folding both mirrors in), leaving plenty of room for pedestrians, wheelchair users, baby buggy pushers (apart from the 2 abreast ones) etc to get past. It seems to me one of the biggest problems with folk parking on the pavement is not that they are using the pavement, but that they are using ALL of it when they don't need to be, and are therefore giving no consideration at all to the pedestrians.
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Car manufacturers make successive new models bigger than their predecessors and while the length may not be a huge factor, the width, for roads like mine, is. They (the roads) are not getting any wider, so why are the cars?..
I think it is partly to create an image of the customer 'getting something better', but I suspect that to cope with increasing height, weight and speed, for some decades cars have had to get wider (and have fatter tyres) to avoid rolling in awkward situations. Small cars like the 205 were designed to be well under a ton - now hardly any car will do that, and some weigh in at a couple of tons.
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Car manufacturers make successive new models bigger than their predecessors and while the length may not be a huge factor, the width, for roads like mine, is. They (the roads) are not getting any wider, so why are the cars?..
I think it is partly to create an image of the customer 'getting something better', but I suspect that to cope with increasing height, weight and speed, for some decades cars have had to get wider (and have fatter tyres) to avoid rolling in awkward situations. Small cars like the 205 were designed to be well under a ton - now hardly any car will do that, and some weigh in at a couple of tons.
Don't forget the NCAP testing includes a factor for side impact protection, this is why doors are now much thicker than they used to be, A and B pillars are also thicker to hold the roof up better in rollovers. The fashion for wide centre consoles and wider seats means wider cars too. (Wider seats probably needed because over half the population are overweight, watch pedestrians in any high street for proof).
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It can't be blanket, too late for that. Reliance on cars is too great and public transport is simply not viable. I suspect it will result in areas where you can and those where you can't, more signage, more fines, more confusion!
As an example my sister in law lives on an estate built about 20 years ago, the carriageway is only 5m wide! If I visit the only option is to park on the pavement as there is simply no way large vehicles can pass if a car is parked on the road.
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If I visit the only option is to park on the pavement as there is simply no way large vehicles can pass if a car is parked on the road.
And as has been often said, space has to (should) be left for emergency vehicles, just in case an emergency occurs. Many brownie points lost if one's unattended car obstructs one of those.
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If I visit the only option is to park on the pavement as there is simply no way large vehicles can pass if a car is parked on the road.
And as has been often said, space has to (should) be left for emergency vehicles, just in case an emergency occurs. Many brownie points lost if one's unattended car obstructs one of those.
In addition to a loss of Brownie points, offenders are also (at least according to a Fireman in the family) going to lose their wing mirrors and a nice pristine, scratch and dent-free side of their vehicles if they need to get to an emergency.
On the other hand, the bin crews will often threaten not to come to collect any more, even the newer trucks with four wheel steering have difficulty - and it seriously slows them down, ticking them off (a longer day) even more. This can sometimes result in bins not being collected on 'problem developments' such as mine if they want to finish their shift at the normal time.
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Or when your significant other moves in and you live in a flat?
My late Mother lived in a development where planning permission was one car per flat. Of 24 flats in development some were bought 'off plan' as buy to let. Others found there way into same market when original owners sold out or died. In that circumstance it's down to purchaser/landlord to recognise the limitation.
Arguably same goes if your girl/boy friend moves in - you know the rules.
More of a problem if she moves in able to use a bus service to get to work and the bus company overhaul the timetable at two weeks notice so that no longer works.
Indeed - TBH, very few people, even with a decent public transport system, can get by these days without the use of a car. Where I live is within 5 minutes walk of the local train station, and the number of car parking spaces was deliberately restricted because the developers and council (at the time) thought that people 'would need many cars' because they could travel everywhere by train or bus. That's just a pipe dream.
Many estate agents either 'neglect' to tell prospective buyers about parking problems (or in my case, the development's parking restrictions and control) or downright lie about it, saying you can 'get away' with parking extra cars. As you say, people should know the rules, but rarely ask questions or fully read the terms of their lease or TP1 before committing to moving in.
Those renting out properties are even worse - they (and often through their letting agency) don't bother to show new tennants the rules, ending up in a blame game when the inevitable parking fine comes the tennant's way.
My local council has said they changed their rules a few years ago (I wished they'd done so before my home development was built) so that ALL new 2-bed properties (flats included) now come with 2 allocated parking spaces minimum, and not only 1; presumably similar upscaling for properties with larger numbers of bedrooms.
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