I work at an office with about 4-5000 people and I’m guessing at about 1500 parking spaces. In my mind this is already way too many, yet the vast majority of my colleagues believe it is up to the company to come up with a parking ‘solution’. At some point people need to wake up and realise the solution needs to come from themselves.

Intrigued how other people cope.

We’re much smaller but have the same issue of insufficient to go around. There are roads nearby (within 100yards) that are non residential and with no parking restrictions. Apparently I need to provide more parking on site. I could do, but would involve knocking down either the factory or offices…
I have put in decent bike sheds and there is a shower. There was zero additional cycling uptake!

Well, if you work at the Council building on the same industrial estate as me, you just park all the way up the entrance road for the estate so everybody else has negotiate it single file all day long, as well as park in the car parks for Sainsbury’s and B&Q and ignore the fact there’s a train station less than 10 mins walk away or a bus stop 5 minutes. Obviously don’t even consider letting anyone else into your car to share the journey either.

Depends where you are located. Obviously requirements will differ between a business based in the centre of London, and one out on an industrial estate in the wilds.

I had a client who had a very large site some considerable miles outside a major city. They funded a bus service for staff to use, which was very popular.

should there be a car parking space for every single employee is that what your saying ?

Around local to me permission is granted based on them not giving a space to every employee to encourage other ways of traveling to work – be it by employers bus, local bus , car share , cycling etc etc .

12 people in our office and 5 spaces, although we can fit another 4 cars in the car park blocking each other in.

We’re rarely all in on the same day and a couple of us ride sometimes so it’s not really a problem.

Of 14 people in our business, 9 drive, 2 use the bus and 3 cycle at least some of the time. I try and cycle in at least twice a week, and have the furthest commute of anyone that works here (23 miles one way, over a largeish hill). Unless someone is already a keen cyclist, distances of more than a few miles are not considered feasible it would seem.

What are your Christmas parties like?

Erm we have 1.5 – 2 spaces each which is just as well because some folk find it really difficult to park between the lines

3 spaces and 8 in the office. It’s not really a problem as three of us use the train (and/or cycle in my case) and two walk to work. One of the remaining three, one sometimes uses the train.

No, I’m saying that at some point it should no longer be the companies problem. They have bike facilities/showers, bus services, car share schemes. We are within 2 miles of the town centre with good rail links. And yet people will go out of their way to not use any of this.

I think the figure is that 80% of employees live within 2miles. I’ve cycled past people leaving their house 1 mile away who then spend 20minutes driving around the car park complaining how busy it is.

Almost none. City centre premises with some visitor parking but only the very top dog partners get parking.

We have 18 staff and a car park with 9 spaces. Apparently even though around 50% of the staff all come from one town they all need their own cars so have just taken to parking on the grass at the side of the building and half on the kerb round the corner.

A cycle commute for me would be 13 miles, quite a bit of it on fairly busy roads plus I’m unfit so I would have to get out the house at about 6am for a 7:30am start.

At one place I worked there were two people living in the same property and who both worked for the company in the same building who drove to work in their own cars. It wasn’t as if either worked late or went anywhere different after work. 🙄

Loads. Which is just as well, because according to Google:

Driving: 52m (and that’s proved to be pretty accurate IME)
Public transport: 2h 46m. Involving three buses, two trains and a decent amount of walking.

I’m not going to sell up & relocate my family for a contract job that could end at short notice, and the whiney smartarses who say “well, you should just get a job that’s five minutes from home, that’s what I did” must either live in a big city or don’t have a specialist job. Or are incredibly lucky.

I work in the largest insurance claims office in Europe (apparently) about 1200 people, but with parking for 300. So they spend an absolute fortune on paying people to park in the local park and ride, and laying on a double decker bus to ferry them, in addition, you can get the bus for free from centre of town out. Each space at the park and ride costs them £1200 a year.

Yet despite having 8 locked bikes nicked outside, they thought we were being funny when we asked for better security for our bikes and have downgraded from having the use of four different cycle-to-work schemes to just the Halfords one to save money and they don’t see the irony…

My wife works at large hospital, for 9am there isn’t enough parking for the staff by 40%, so they park all over the grass and elsewhere, if you want a parking space for 9am be there for 7.30!

A cycle commute for me would be 13 miles, quite a bit of it on fairly busy roads plus I’m unfit so I would have to get out the house at about 6am for a 7:30am start.

Don’t know if it could work for you but I drive about 15 miles with my bike in the back of the car then park up and cycle the rest of the way in (about 5 miles) avoiding the congested city centre traffic and parking battles.

6 spaces, 19 people – our “parking solution” is the road or the pub next door (they don’t mind).

I’m fully awake, yet can’t work out how to get 2 kids from home to two different schools and 6 miles further to work can be done without a ‘parking solution’ especially as I need to go places during the day for work.

People need to wake up to the idea that their circumstances may not be identical to their own.

500+ in the City. Quite rightly, zero parking spaces.

What are your Christmas parties like?

Ours are great, we have 2 other offices, with 10 and 20 ish people in them, who all come to the Christmas do which is usually in a big hotel near Hull, and we get bed and breakfast included and can bring partners at no extra expense if we want as well!

25 staff and about 40 parking spaces. Office leased from council on a business/industrial park at the edge of a small town.
I am the only person who cycles (15 miles each way) or uses public transport although some people live less than a mile away.

My currently place has about 500 on site with parking a bit tight but manageable. There is no public transport. Not even bad public transport, just none. Cycling, even for people that live <1mile away involves negotiating dual carriage way and a roundabout over the A19. I’ve done it – even for a serious cyclist it’s terrifying. So in our case it really is the companies role to sort it out which they mostly did by leasing another car park.

My previous company had a difficult parking situation. It was a first come first served with anyone after 8.20am having real issues (start time was anything before 9). It was pretty unfair on anyone who had commitments in the morning, such as kids. There was viable public transport and cycling but for most people driving was quicker. IMO it would have been fairer to charge for parking to create a level playing field. The parking spaces cost the business money in any case.

City centre office, 30 ish people at my firm with 1 parking space which is reserved. 6 or 8 drive in and spend £8 per day to park, the rest use a combination of bikes, trains and buses. Office as a whole likely has 1000 or so people in and 100 spaces max. Lots of very secure bike parking though, always busy too, good showers, lockers and a drying room help encourage it.

That’s pretty normal for a city centre office in my experience.

400 or so, around 10 parking spaces (one was converted into bike parking a few years ago).
Happily, the number of bikes has increased from about 4-5 in the previous area to 20-30 in the larger area now available (combined with showers). I think this is partly due to increased general cycling though, as the increase was gradual.
I would suggest that if they complain and some are driving a mile, you put in restrictions on who can park at work (those that need the company car for business first, then those 10+ miles away, 5+ miles away etc. until you have no spaces left). That’ll learn ’em.

50-60 people, 2 spaces (mainly for visitors)

Like Sundayjumper the public transport to get to work involves a lengthy walk to get a bus, then another to get closer to my work and then another walk. It’s nearly 2 hours of travelling and I’m only 8 miles from work. The buses are the main problem as they take such convoluted routes to ensure they go the newly built interchange.
I would cycle but we have no shower facilities and the wet wipe cleanup after still leaves me feeling dirty all day. I don’t tend to cool down for a while either so just sweaty again which isn’t fair on my colleagues either and not very professional when meeting clients.
It would be easier to do a steady walk to work but I don’t have a spare 4 hours a day to go to and from work.

City as well. We don’t have all the floors in the building, but at a guess, 1,500 – 2,000 total.

4 car spaces 30 odd for mo’bikes. 70 ish for push bikes.

Reading the comments about awkward public transport I realise I’m pretty lucky. If I use the train then I can get dropped off by my wife on her way to her workplace which is in the opposite direction to mine (assuming she’s not biking in). Then at the other end it’s a five minute walk to the office.

Surprisingly it’s only about five minutes quicker than biking the whole way (21Km).

I’ve been invited to apply for jobs elsewhere in the area but as soon as I looked at the time involved in getting there I’d decline. An hour and a half at either end of the day isn’t worth it IMO.

@philjunior – A financial institution near us did that. What a palaver! You’d think they’d been asked to sacrifice their first born. They are so lazy that they drive into town at lunch time despite the offices being less than 400m from the town centre.

410 people/3 car parks. Council PPP building, part of the deal is they promote green transport options.

About 9000 people, not sure about the number of car parking spaces but enough that anyone you talk to there will recognise it as a problem – not enough desks either!

Schemes that are in place to try and alleviate the problem
Train station 5 mins walk
2+ only parking spaces nearest the buildings
Limited parking permits for people who live inside 3 miles (limited means only after midmorning, by which point the car parks are full)
Cycle parking aplenty – no cycle to work scheme though, unless you count the option of an advance in salary
Segregated cycle paths

Personally I cycle every day so it’s not a huge problem for me, but when people are turning up at work at quarter to 7 to ensure they get a space and a desk it’s a bit bonkers.

No prizes for guessing where I work by the way..

I work in the cushy public sector. they’ve found that charging your staff for a parking permit seems to motivate them onto their bikes quite well.

Large Pharma manufacturing site, it’s absolutely awful for car sharing, I only know of a few that share. Lots of folks on flexi/different start times doesn’t help, and we’re also out of town in brown belt area of a new town, which isn’t really served by public transport.

A hell of a lot more folks could cycle, but are just too bastard lazy to be honest, as most people out of nearly 400 will live within 10-15 miles, and as it’s a new town, there’s great cycle paths everywhere.

Our HQ in Brentford pay their staff £1 a day to cycle to work, which gets credited onto a card that they can use in the onsite Evans shop…. The buggers.

I’ve just bought a motorbike due to parking constraints around our workshop.

about 300 folk, around 15 -20 spaces. I have one of them 🙂

Its not luck that gives you a public transport / cycle commute. Its about setting your priorities and building your life around not needing a car.

4,000 people – around 1,500 parking spaces.

Allocated on length of service

tjagain – Member
Its not luck that gives you a public transport / cycle commute. Its about setting your priorities and building your life around not needing a car.

It’s lucky for us all that so many choose not to do that.

Large Pharma

Our HQ in Brentford

Lol @ned!

Its not luck that gives you a public transport / cycle commute. Its about setting your priorities and building your life around not needing a car.

Do you decide every morning to be holier than thou, or just most days?.