[Closed] Residents who think they own the road they live on,parking issues

Around our way there is not really room for cars to park both sides of the road. The people that **** me off are the ones who have to park directly outside their house even if the person opposite has done the same..
They could park 20 feet up the road but it has to be directly outside.
It's a problem for the delivery drivers and ****ing irresponsible to block a road so that a fire engine can't get down it.
**** you you ****ing lazy ****s.

It is real deprivation. If the space is used [s]to park cars[/s] as a private driveway/garden/building plot it is depriving others of the use of the space. You can't play football there, you can't stop and chat to your neighbours there, you can't use it to teach your kids how to ride a bike/make a go cart etc.

Loads of uses that are not just for cars!

All of which deprive someone of that space - you missed that point.
You bastards if you play football there you deprive me of my use as now i cannot play cricket - i think we have now successfully proved that when someone is using a public space to do their thing we cannot do our thing....who knew eh and of course playing football in the road is a perfectly legal activity as opposed to parking a car and wont deprive anyone of that space

Its still a poor argument

I never pavement park.

After 20-odd years of (almost) never parking with wheels on the footpath, I've started doing it at home. The reason being, everyone else does it so I'm stuck out further if I don't, and I've recently had the side of my car taken off for the second time (first was a write-off, second almost was).

Roads were around for centuries before cars!

True, but flawed. We can argue that roads were originally built for farmers' pony & trap or for Roman chariots or whatever, but the modern infrastructure we have today is primarily (though of course not exclusively) built for the mighty car. If we invented teleporters and got rid of all the cars, do you think we'd still be building roads? I very much doubt it.

You can't play football there

(and many variations on a theme)

Good. There's no need for it, we have dedicated recreation areas for this sort of thing. Go find a park. Play on the car-free drive everyone seems to have. Don't all you middle-class WCBs have huge lawns and gardens in your mansions?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to drive around my local football field for a bit.

[quote=Junkyard ]I guess the choice for some is block the road or block the pavement a little bit. The later is preferable to the former though its hard to argue its considerate in general.

and right there we have a typical motorists' "choice" which quite neatly sums up the background to the whole situation. It's like it's a multiple choice question: do I (a) block the movement of other traffic (b) obstruct pedestrians and break the law; because there aren't any other options are there?

All of which deprive someone of that space - you missed that point.
You bastards if you play football there you deprive me of my use as now i cannot play cricket

Ah, so you want to have a 15 hour long cricket match? Or maybe a bit longer (given the streetview link I posted up there is always like that, even during the working day, so presumably the cars only move occasionally).

of course playing football in the road is a perfectly legal activity

Of course it is - but then you knew that didn't you? So I presume you're not trying to insinuate that it isn't.

All of which deprive someone of that space - you missed that point.

Apologies Junkyard, I didn't realise the semantics were what the discussion was about. I stand corrected!

I suppose the question then is, what additional benefit is the "other activities" compared to the car-parking? Difficult to quantify I'm sure, but I hope most people would be able to see that playing cricket (or whatever other social activity) offers additional benefits to the individuals and society compared to parking a car. I'd be interested to hear the argument from the other side though!

Not that I'm particularly trying to use the playing footy in the street argument - I have better ones. Another local road which I often cycle I've more than once had an unsafe close pass on when I've pulled out towards the middle of the road to pass parked cars (on one occasion I'm sure if I hadn't taken evasive action I would have been hit). Now you might argue this is the fault of the overtaking drivers, but it's a wide road and if it wasn't for the parked cars there would be plenty of space for them to pass me safely even with oncoming traffic.

We can argue that roads were originally built for farmers' pony & trap or for Roman chariots or whatever, but the modern infrastructure we have today is primarily (though of course not exclusively) built for the mighty car.

I think that most folks here are talking about residential streets, rather than A-roads and the like. It's probably a good idea to differentiate.

If we invented teleporters and got rid of all the cars, do you think we'd still be building roads

Of course we would, we need somewhere to socialise and do all the other stuff previously mentioned. Where better than outside your front door?

Good. There's no need for it, we have dedicated recreation areas for this sort of thing. Go find a park.

Very good. 😆

I hope most people would be able to see that playing cricket (or whatever other social activity) offers additional benefits to the individuals and society compared to parking a car.

You're making a massive assumption that the car being parked there is of no "value".

Doctor driving to work to perform life saving surgery
Caregiver parked at a patients home providing valuable services

etc

Not that I'm particularly trying to use the playing footy in the street argument

I think any specific activity other than transport will be pulled apart.

[quote=Junkyard ]Its not really depriving you of anything that useful..unless you wanted the parking space

As explained above it's depriving me of the road space to safely use the road. But I realised we can expand on that argument. So if the road works perfectly fine as a means to get from one place to another even with the parked cars on, then presumably we could remove all the parked cars and make the road narrower. Yay, lots of space for dedicated cycling infrastructure!

You're making a massive assumption that the car being parked there is of no "value".

No I'm not. That's why I said additional benefits, the presumption being that the original use had a benefit.

Besides, what kind of proportion of parked cars are Drs on call or caregivers? I suspect it's pretty low compared to regular run-of-the-mill folk.

Over the last few summers we've had a 'make sundays special' event once a month. Close off a handful of streets to cars and let people use them for other things. Luckily the people have been a little more imaginative and have found some other uses.

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You'd think the mayor had suggested killing each car driver's first born from the attitude of some drivers to losing access to a few roads but it was hugely successful. Obviously this was a special event but there are far more mundane things. A lot of our local streets still have street parties where neighbours get together, markets (either official or adhoc), art events.

This...
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Or this...
[img] [/img]

But actually maybe it isn't even a choice, maybe we can do both. Just need a little give from the main taker.

I suspect it's pretty low compared to regular run-of-the-mill folk.

So regular run of the mill folk have no value???

This whole "car's shouldn't be parked on the road" argument sounds an awful lot like car drivers moaning that "cyclists shouldn't be on the road"...

I think your hearing is dodgy

This whole "car's shouldn't be parked on the road" argument sounds an awful lot like car drivers moaning that "cyclists shouldn't be on the road"...

Half households in Hackney don't have a car, or at least didn't when I lived there (in a terraced house built in 1865. A big one, the selling of which was one of my many grievous financial errors...) The kids from those households of course being more likely (than mine) to play in the street or be pushed in buggies along blocked payments. My point? People should feel less entitlement than they do to space they don't own, and, erm, it's not fair.

interestingly as autonomous cars become more widespread (and actually become fully autonomous), this problem might go away completely. Why would anyone privately own a car when an uber-like service would be cheaper (as it is in use 100% of the time), available anywhere (ie, drive me from a-b, then from c-a afterwards), able to drive people unable to drive themselves (kids home from school), and vary in size/capacity (just hail a larger car when you need it), then can park itself somewhere central when it needs to charge.

The overall number of cars required to service the population would drop (I would guess the number of cars needed simultaneously in rush-hour is less than 30% of the overall number of cars), and if you can hail one to be waiting outside your door in 3 minutes time, why would you have one parked there (the only gap is potentially people living right out in the sticks, but then parking isn't an issue for them anyway)..

the elephant in the room that we're all arguing around is one of 'level of change' and the inability of our infrastructure to keep up.

most residential roads were built long before the cars, and the houses have no provision for garage or off-road parking, they were built at a width appropriate the use at the time, some idea of future use maybe but essentially they were built to accomodate he traffic and use at the time.

More recent residential streets (last 50-60 years) are a bit wider, and were often built (where possible) with some provision for parking [b]a[/b] car offroad, so the occasional extra one in the road was no big deal.

But over the last 50+ years car ownership and use has increased massively, but the roads and parking spaces have not, the result now being that residential streets are crammed full of them. They simply were not built with that in mind.

If you were building those same streets now with the expectation that both sides would be crammed with parked cars, and each house needing 2 or more spaces you'd do it differently, very differently.

It's simply the massive increase in car ownership that has caused it, and us (the collective us) not being prepared for that or anticipating it to the level it's got to.

People did play football and socialise in the street, even when there were some cars parked there, I'm only in my early 30's and even I can remember playing in the street, having to be careful of 1 or 2 parked cars when kicking a ball around, and occasionally having to stop for a passing car, these days those same roads have a continuous line of parked cars along one or both sides, and traffic is so frequent you have your wits about you just crossing the road let along doing anything in it.

it's the volume of cars and the lack of space that's the issue, and there's no quick way to either decrease the number of cars or increase the amount of space = conflict.

I reckon it's going to be a lot easier (and more beneficial) in the long run to decrease the car ownership and use than it is to magic up more space to store them.

It will be interesting to look back in another 50 years and see what we make of this current situaation, will it have gone away with the advent of alternative transport choices? Will we look back on this and wonder how we ever let it get so bad? I hope so.

[quote=amedias ]it's the volume of cars and the lack of space that's the issue, and there's no quick way to either decrease the number of cars or increase the amount of space = conflict.

There isn't, but it's a problem which won't ever be solved if people pretend it isn't a problem.

I quite agree!

And as I am so often saying to people, just because it won't be quick or easy to solve, doesn't me it isn't worth solving.

And as I am so often saying to people, just because it won't be quick or easy to solve, doesn't me it isn't worth solving.

Now you might argue this is the fault of the overtaking drivers,

People will always be idiots, sadly. I followed a huge faux-by-four to work this morning which swerved violently into oncoming traffic, narrowly missing another vehicle, to avoid an empty carrier bag that was blowing around in the road.

Of course we would, we need somewhere to socialise and do all the other stuff previously mentioned. Where better than outside your front door?

I think the last time I "socialised in the street" was the Silver Jubilee in 1977.

I think that most folks here are talking about residential streets, rather than A-roads and the like. It's probably a good idea to differentiate.

True, you're probably right. I live on a main road so the lines are blurred a little* for me.

(* - I should probably ask the council to repaint them.)

So regular run of the mill folk have no value???

I'm impressed you have interpreted my post this way. Yes, of course regular run of the mill folk have value... ..but do their journeys and choices associated with them have more value than the costs associated with them?

I think the last time I "socialised in the street" was the Silver Jubilee in 1977.

That's a shame.

True, you're probably right. I live on a main road so the lines are blurred a little* for me.

It's why the two key transport planning documents are "Manual for Streets" - for residential streets and the like, and "The Design Manual for Roads and Bridges" for A roads, trunk roads, motorways etc.

Maybe some of the ire on this thread is because of a lack of distinguishing between which roads we're talking about...!

[quote=Cougar ]I think the last time I "socialised in the street" was the Silver Jubilee in 1977.

How sad. I'm one of the most socially retarded people you're likely to meet (even on here), yet still regularly talk to my neighbours in the street (actually that's probably the majority of my social interaction!) The kids also play in the street and it's great. Of course I am privileged middle class, and not only do I own the paved area in front of our house, our little cul-de-sac is also a paved shared use area without cars parked. But it would be nice if more places were a bit more like this, something which might be possible with less car hegemony.

True, you're probably right. I live on a main road so the lines are blurred a little* for me.

It was suggested earlier that if we were talking about on street parking we were talking about residential roads only residents (and visitors) drove down - my streetview link is a B road and the other one I mentioned is an A road. Both with residents on street parking.

That's a shame.

Not really, I spend time in and out with friends instead.

Besides, I live in a largely Asian-populated area rather than the rose-tinted Brexitesque ideal of middle England in the 1960s, so I'm unlikely to be drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches with my neighbours, sitting on a white picket fence discussing who's going to win in this year's Boat Race.

That's a shame.

[quote=Peyote ]It's why the two key transport planning documents are "Manual for Streets" - for residential streets and the like, and "The Design Manual for Roads and Bridges" for A roads, trunk roads, motorways etc.

...and you've missed out MfS2, which covers the sort of roads I'm talking about!

If you were building those same streets now with the expectation that both sides would be crammed with parked cars, and each house needing 2 or more spaces you'd do it differently, very differently.

[rant]
The problem is it's still [b]not[/b] done differently. Planners still allow developments to be built that have far too few parking spaces (or space to park cars). This is driven by an overarching strategy to decrease car use....except the components aren't joined up, people still have to use cars as the alternatives aren't up to scratch, the main one being public transport. There's also cycle route networks, car share schemes, even as far as faster broadband to allow more home or local working.

The route cause is ineffective Government policy, it puts the onus for change far too much onto private enterprise sector. The private sector wants to avoid as much of this change as possible as it usually affects profit.

E.g. having fewer parking spaces means you can build (and then sell) more houses on a piece of land.
[/rant]

I'm not not the most sociable of people but we go to around 10-15 street based social events a year.

I'm sure it's a regular occurrence in Royal Tunbridge Wells or somewhere, but where I live a "street based social event" would be everyone turning out to watch a car on fire.

That's a shame.

Not really,

It's not a shame that you don't, that's your choice, it's shame that you and others [i]can't[/i].

A Big jump here... but maybe if they could, communities would be more integrated and involved, rather than the street being something you escape from into your house. This thread has already demonstrated how such a trivial thing as parking a car can drive a wedge between neighbours 😉

...and you've missed out MfS2, which covers the sort of roads I'm talking about!

Apparently it's not as good a "policy" document as the previous two, so it doesn't carry the same weight in planning terms: I understand it didn't go through the right Government approval process and was never properly rubber stamped.

You're quite right though, it is a useful .doc and contains some great stuff to bridge the gap.

[quote=Cougar ]I'm sure it's a regular occurrence in Royal Tunbridge Wells, but where I live a "street based social event" would be everyone turning out to watch a car on fire.

But wouldn't it be nice if that wasn't the case? Sure I live in a Middle England village, but it's far from being mono-cultural - one of the people I interact with most often isn't white and wasn't born in this country.

[quote=Peyote ]Apparently it's not as good a "policy" document as the previous two, so it doesn't carry the same weight in planning terms: I understand it didn't go through the right Government approval process and was never properly rubber stamped.

fairy nuff - I've never done more than skimmed it (nor DMRB), mainly just aware of its existence to expand the principles of MfS (a document I have sadly read the majority of) into the sort of larger roads I've been discussing.

It's not a shame that you don't, that's your choice, it's shame that you and others can't

It's not really by choice, it's by circumstance. I'd [i]love[/i] to move to one of these nice little middle-class community-centric areas that some here seem to be assuming that everyone lives in, rather than one of the most deprived wards in the country.

The dominant community is centred around a religion, so whilst my neighbours get on well enough and give each other a cheery hello, take in parcels and so on, that's about the extent of our interaction.

Being STW, I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me it's all my fault and I should make more of an effort, but I'm afraid I'm not ready to sign up to the local Mosque quite yet.

I'm sure it's a regular occurrence in Royal Tunbridge Wells, but where I live a "street based social event" would be everyone turning out to watch a car on fire.

But wouldn't it be nice if that wasn't the case? Sure I live in a Middle England village, but it's far from being mono-cultural

Of course it would. And multi-cultural communities can work - London appears to (generally) for example. The problem comes when one - or two - cultures dominate the area; with one you're either part of that culture or you're not, and with two you've got friction and tension. With many cultures things generally seem to mix much better as far as I can see.

Your friend of undisclosed race and gender, do they take part in the local community events and generally integrate into the local culture? I bet they do. Where I live it's not that the Asian's haven't integrated; rather, they don't need to, it's me that would have to integrate into their community and as I said, I'm not ready to sell my soul to Allah just yet.

[quote=Cougar ]Your friend of undisclosed race and gender, do they take part in the local community events and generally integrate into the local culture?

Yes, of course - but we're veering wildly off topic here. Clearly there are other reasons why on street socialising doesn't work for you, but for many people the cars (parked or otherwise) significantly inhibit it.

I don't especially go out of my to interact with them either. That's what makes the street based social events so great.

It's a good point, and perhaps that's exactly what needs to happen here to bring people together. Don't get me wrong, there are local events in the town which does bring folk together; there's a carnival every year for instance, but that would be a "town" event rather than a "neighbourhood" event, if you see what I mean.

Sorry, I've derailed the thread somewhat. The point I was making really was, it's easy to wax lyrical about jumpers for goalposts from an ivory tower, but not everywhere is tea and scones.

Sorry, I've derailed the thread somewhat.

[img] [/img]

Clearly there are other reasons why on street socialising doesn't work for you, but for many people the cars (parked or otherwise) significantly inhibit it.

I'd cheerfully swap you for an area where people wanted to have a street party but parked cars were in the way. #firstworldproblems (-:

Anyway, isn't this two different things? If you wanted to have a street party, the solution is to tell everyone, "we're having a street party, everyone move your cars for the day," no? Happens all the time, I got a leaflet through the door the other day asking me not to park on the street to facilitate roadworks.

Whereas some seem to be objecting about disruption to day-to-day "socialising," and I'm perplexed as to what impromptu socialising you want to do in the middle of the road which is prevented by parked cars.

I'm perplexed as to what impromptu socialising you want to do in the middle of the road which is prevented by parked cars.

World Kerby Championships

I'm perplexed as to what impromptu socialising you want to do in the middle of the road which is prevented by parked cars.

I would've thought a burning car would do a fair bit of damage to the surrounding vehicles so...that. Probably.