Pavement parking Ban.

[itsallthedramaMickiloveit]

How would you be affected if there was a blanket ban on all pavement parking.

I'm not just talking about the inability to get a pram or wheelchair passed but a complete ban on any car on the pavement at all.

Pavements here are as wide as the road. Would cause traffic issues.

Unless all roads and pavements were of identical sizes, I can't see how a complete ban would be helpful.

Me neither. But apparently they're looking at bringing them in.

A street by me has all terraced houses and no parking. Both sides are full of cars.
If this happens either the road won't be drivable or the residents will have to find somewhere else to put their cars...and there is nowhere else.

It’d be great. Pavements are for pedestrians! Keep the vehicles on the road.

I would support it 100%.

If this is introduced country wide it will be managed the same way it is currently in London now. We have a ban on all pavement parking, however it is allowed in some locations.

If the road is narrow and the pavement wide enough to allow a car to partially park on the pavement whilst not blocking access for pavement users, there will be marked off areas and signage to allow parking this way.

Where there isn't room, parking restrictions will be put in so the road can not be blocked by people parking on both sides, and people will have to either give up their car or park further away.

Some pavements are very wide though, whereas the road could be very narrow. I’m thinking about where I used to live. It was a narrow road, but wide pavement. I used to park with two wheels on the pavement. There was then enough room for a double buggy to still use the pavement.

Almost the whole of our estate would have to find somewhere else to park our cars and would probably mean there'd be even fewer green spaces here - they'd end up paving over the park bit in the middle to turn it into a car park and a lot of people's front gardens would be dug up to make into driveways. We live in a 1940s estate with narrow roads and no drives.

I don't see how it could realistically be enforced across the country. Most houses around here have no space for drives, the front doors open onto the pavement or a very small garden about 2-3 feet in size.

The roads are not wide enough to properly allow cars to park on them allowing vehicles to pass so everyond parks with one set of wheels on the pavement. Although buggies and wheelchairs can get through it can be difficult on bin days but there is no other choice. If all cars parjed on the road no one would be able to drive up or down them let alone allow access for emergency vehicles.

Im sure we are not the only place like this in the UK. There's no place for the cars to go, so its simply foolish to think it will ever happen.

round here it would be brilliant, people have started parking on the kerb, add leaving the bins out and the pavement is blocked.
so no wheelchair user or someone with visual impairments can use the pavement.

The problem is they want to potentially enforce an ill thought out law without building the infrastructure to accommodate it.

I don't know anyone who wants to park on the pavement. But we living in a country with houses and sometimes entire streets built before a time when personal cars were a thing.

It would make picking DCs up from school on foot a lot less dangerous.

Bring it on. The sooner the better.

I support it 100%. Cars by me are parked on the pavement even though the road is wide enough for one car to be parked on the road and traffic including emergency vehicles to pass. What there isn't room for is for cars to be parked on both sides of the road so people park on the pavement rather than walk a few yards. Last week the pavement was fully blocked by a heating van which was parked on the corner of a road. I am hard oh hearing and wont walk in the road as I don't have enough notice of cars coming around the corner. I walked on the front garden

Where I live it would mean huge issues for access for emergency vehicles. We have wide pavements and narrow roads, and at the moment there is enough room for wheelchairs etc if people pavement park on one side of the street. If people had to park fully on the roads, fire engines and ambulances wouldn't be able to get through.

In theory, I think it's a great idea. In practice, I think it has to be done on an area by area basis. Especially in towns where councils give planning permission for more and more houses/flats without any parking provision.....

They would have to widen the roads somehow then, it’s the only way it would work on some roads.

I walk a lot with a pram so completely understand the frustration when someone selfishly blocks most of the pavement and you end up walking in the road. I also live on a fairly narrow street so understand why pavement parking is sometimes necessary. Cars simply couldn’t drive through my street if pavement parking was banned. Our NDN’s don’t park on the pavement and they totally block the road so that’s selfish imo.

Where I live it would mean huge issues for access for emergency vehicles. We have wide pavements and narrow roads, and at the moment there is enough room for wheelchairs etc if people pavement park on one side of the street. If people had to park fully on the roads, fire engines and ambulances wouldn't be able to get through

Same here, if all the vehicles were fully on the road it would cause issues for not just emergency vehicles, but bin lorries etc as well. It's a new estate, we have a double drive so no issues but plenty of others have allocated parking and they either have more cars than spaces or just seem to prefer the road outside their front door.

Im intriqued to know how those who support the idea would resolve the issues highlighted?

The only way I can see which would work is to either not allow those who live in such areas to own cars or to implement the zones like London apparently has which just seems daft as it will mean money spent on signs and parking bays to allow people to do what they currently do.

I'm intriqued to know how those who support the idea would resolve the issues highlighted?

It isn't up to us to resolve the issues. Pavement parking has always been against the highway code and police will force vehicles to move on if they are causing an obstruction. Around here pavement parkers get fined if they do it outside the schools.

If you have nowhere near to legally park your car then move elsewhere or accept you have a long walk to your car. The disabled and partially sighted have a right to be safe on pavements. Your car doesn't.

If parking on the road means ambulances can't get through then park somewhere else.

How would you be affected if there was a blanket ban on all pavement parking

I'm not just talking about the inability to get a pram or wheelchair passed but a complete ban on any car on the pavement at all

Depends how it’s implemented. I own the “pavement” in front of my house (it’s not actually a useful pavement but appears as though it is). It’s going to be tedious if I have to keep appealing tickets for parking on my own land!

I'm sure that the highway code says that you -shouldn't- park on the pavement. I don't think that it says that its against the law. Happy to be corrected.

My life would be a lot better if there was such a ban.

I’m a wheelchair user and I’m frequently (several times a week) forced into the road by people parking on pavements. Either because there isn’t room to get my chair past or because they’ve made sure to leave what they think is enough room but they’ve blocked the dropped kerb.

If you have nowhere near to legally park your car then move elsewhere or accept you have a long walk to your car.

Thats a very simplistic way of looking at the issue though. Our entire area was built without cars in mind as I imagine many others were and as a result I'd wager appropriately 80% of all the houses in our town dont have any parking facilities. To suggest they all move is just daft. They couldn't park further away either as there is no where else to park, well not unless they turned parks and green spaces into car
parks.

It may be against the highway code and obviously people should be fined for parking carelessly outside schools. However the reason its hardly enforced elsewhere ia because most people only do so when they have no choice.

If they did a blanket ban on parking on pavements, they would need to spend billions on turning extra wide pavements into roads so that people can park if the roads are currently too narrow.

I live abroad and pavement parking is illegal, as is parking on the wrong side of the road (facing the opposite way to the direction of traffic). It works very well indeed here, but we don't have the incredibly narrow roads you find in so many parts of the UK. I remember living in England 200 meters from a small commuter train station on a cul-de-sac of semis which all had drives and garages, and everything was great until the station carpark was made pay and display. Overnight it became a far less pleasant place to live with small children and babies because the pavements on both sides of the road were parked on meaning there wasn't room for even a single buggy, and it wasn't possible to cross with a clear view because there was no choice but to park between parked cars. Really shitty. The newly pay and display car park was virtually empty every day.

Pavement parking is really shit - it seriously impacts on quality of life for local residents. It's so much pleasanter to live somewhere it doesn't happen.

However going back to the UK it's sometimes startling just how narrow roads are compared to a lot of European countries (with the exception of mountainous areas). The roads really aren't fit for a population who expect virtually every adult to have their own car. At all.

It's also massively dangerous for children in many parts of the UK especially England to walk to school because of pavement parking and far too many cars on the road, which is a vicious circle and a really bad thing on multiple levels.

What's actually needed, given there isn't space to widen the roads, is very drastic measures to improve public transport beyond all recognition and seriously disincentivise private car ownership.

That'll never happen obviously. People only vote for their own short term personal interests so no political party would try to bring in anything sweeping enough to actually improve things because short term it would be unpopular.

I wish they'd ban cyclists from the pavement! Apart from little kids, obvs.

I'm intrigued to know how those who support the idea would resolve the issues highlighted?
i am intrigued to know how wheelchair users and the visually impaired are supposed to get around when cars are using the pavements.