Are there now too many disabled parking spaces?

[Ladywithabagonherhead]

I know I will sound like an entitled cow, but I wonder if I am alone with this. I am all for helping people who have disabilities in any way we can, that is decent - and if you are disabled yourself reading this, this is not against you at all.

I more and more think that we are overdoing the whole disabled parking slot deal. It's been happening these last few months everywhere I go, shops, high streets, supermakets, vet, etc.. Everyone is struggling to find a space, while there is a whole row reserved for blue badge holders, with one maybe two parked there. Meanwhile, there are fewer spots for family cars with small children, for example. Surely... surely there are way more families with kids than disabled parking needs (and I don't even have kids, just an observation). Not to mention the rest of us. Again, yes, we need dedicated parking spots, but aren't we overdoing it? As in, it's not really balanced. This is what I experience where I live, at least.

No.

There's often no more than a dozen in a massive supermarket car park with hundreds of spaces. Even halving that to give 6 more regular spaces won't make a jot of difference in a full car park.

I’m a blue badge holder and can rarely find a space 🤣 where are all the free spaces you see?

My local Tesco Extra store, the biggest in the area, has 35 designated disabled parking spaces out of 800 or just over 4%. It’s nowhere near enough, believe me, especially in a town known for a high percentage of elderly residents.

My husband is a relatively recent blue badge holder (and it took almost eight months to be awarded, for those who think it’s easy) and we’ve rarely been able to find an empty space.

Seems to be loads of parent and child about near me and very few disabled spots
why not put the parent and child furthest away with a safe footpath to the store wide enough for a pram, disabled bays closest to the store and everything else in between

I tend think their lives are, on balance, pretty much more inconvenient than my need to park slightly closer to a shop, tbh. Like have you ever actually thought what it is like to be in a wheelchair? Really thought about it?
🙄

In supermarkets yes. There are always loads of empty disabled spaces. Child and parent ones seem to be full up so perhaps the ratios need changing.

Rarely a single disabled spot free when I go out in my area. And we have a blue badge for my DD. So, no. There aren’t too many.

Also, NO.

Yes -have noticed this a lot recently.
Full car park but endless rows of disabled and EV spaces free.

About 30 years ago a friend of mine said the parent and child parking should be at the far end of the car park but with a covered walk way so a small child won't be in the rain.

OP Have you spent 24 hours studying the car park? 7 days a week? for 12 months?

You don't really know what you're talking about do you? Whilst a person may be the holder of a BB, they don't have to be the driver. Many BBs are held by people whose impairments mean they are accompanied.

How much experience do you have of everyday life with someone who needs assistance due to a physical or mental impairment? Maybe the reason the spaces are empty where you are is that it is unwelcoming to less able people. Every day involves planning as to whether it is even going to be possible to go where you need to be due to lack of access or an abundance of obstacles making each sortie hazardous.

It's been a while since I've read such an unpleasant thread on here.

There is a formula to calculate the provision of BB spaces. Look it up. If you disagree with it, lobby the Government to get it changed.

It is helpful if some disabled spaces are empty, because there would ideally always be a spare.

Some non-blue badge drivers moan constantly about any other road users - they want less space given to buses, cyclists, pedestrians and blue badge drivers.

No. There are not too many. The right number has to be more than appear to be needed at any one time because there must always be a vacant space. If a family with children turn up somewhere and there are no P&C spaces left, they do have other options and can make do. If a wheelchair user turns up and there's no space they are much more likely to just have to turn around and go home. In a lot of places there aren't nearly enough blue badge spaces.

The obsession with driving door to door and minimising the number of steps taken between car parking space and final goal is what causes these issues. Massive traffic jams around schools at 8:30 and 3:30 are sympoms of the same problem. A culture of consciously choosing to look for parking 10 minutes walk away from the journey destination would make a massive difference to the enormous pressures on parking spaces at highly popular destinations. If supermarkets made the wide spaces for families with young children be at the opposite end of thr car park, so that you load your toddler into a trolley and walk across the carpark, then there would be a lot less pressure on them as people with older children who can't be arsed to use their perfectly functional legs wouldn't be taking a P&C space space when they don't really need it any more.

Come on. It’s nothing like saying that disabled people should kill themselves.

OP’s point is that there is an optimal ratio and in her area she thinks it’s off, and having read other replies she thinks it’s off in other directions too in those areas.

If you advocated blue badge spaces instead of P&C or EV chargers or an ice cream van, are you saying parents, children, EV drivers and ice cream eaters should kill themselves?

I dared mention old people first because I am also from an older generation and figured being part of that group would make it better than pointing at a group that i am not part of. but yes, everyone who is not fit. Agreed.

Absolutely nobody was challenging anyone's disability or wishing ot have anyone's blue badge. The point was calculating spaces poorly -wether under or overestimating, depending on he place. Based on commenters who seem to know how it works, it seems like every place uses a 6% rule, which clearly does not work. This was not about challenging anyone.

For the twentieth time - NOBODY, not a single person challenged anyone's disability, quality of life, or wanted to their spot. Literally not about that. The point was that businesses, organisations calculate the amount of of disabled spots in a dumb way, seemingly using a mandatory 6% rule regardless of where it is - if they are not being used, it is not calculated well, and wasted, and the same applies for a small car park in front of a GP surgery for instance, where it always gets filled, it is also not calculated well. See? Works both ways, and nobody wast talking about prejudice about any single person

On principle I agree, should be more, so there is always room. But If there are 43 disabled spots - I literally counted on satellite view - and there is no more than 2-3 parking there ever at the same time, are you seriously telling me that is not overestimating the need? Especially with the rest of it being full, making people having to park somewhere else? And for no reason, because those empty spots will stay empty. Same thing applies when there is just a silly 3 spots somewhere and people would need a lot more, that is also bad!

I think all the disabled spaces from my town must have been moved to yours!
We've had a steady decline in the number of spaces over the last few years with a lot of the spaces replaced with electric charging points. This has happened with the regular spaces too, but has a bigger impact on the disabled spaces as there were only a handful of them to begin with.

We travel with DD1, who has a blue badge regularly on long journeys on motorways. I’d say we can only get in a disabled space at a service station, about half the time.

We often find, when we take her to retail parks, all the disabled spaces are full. DH wrote a complaint to a major supermarket chain, that half the cars in disabled spaces didn’t have a blue badge, and they ought to police it. The supermarket wrote back to say, they didn’t have enough staff.

OP doesn’t say where they live, but it’s certainly not our experience that there are empty disabled spaces everywhere we go!

Just stop.
I use a wheelchair a lot. I feel far less disabled now I can get out and about in the world with my wheelchair than I did pre diagnosis when I didn't understand why I found everything so hard and would often just stay at home for weeks on end. Before I had my wheelchair I couldn't manage to go to a zoo or a museum or a music concert

It isn't a binary and there are lots of people who don't qualify for a blue badge but who really struggle and for them their car may be their primary source of mobility and independence

Where were there 43, and how many normal spaces were there for the same destination? Local authority guidance is normally for about 6% of spaces being blue badge, but higher if there's a reason for higher demand, businesses are advised to have one bb space per disabled employee plus 5% total capacity, supermarkets might choose to build with more BB spaces than their nearest competitor in order to gain a reputation as the best place to shop locally if you are a BB driver.

43 spaces would be correct if the general parking capacity is about 800-900 cars. In my city the 3 most convenient car parks are
A - 2500 spaces - 75 disabled bays - 3% - inadequate
B - 940 spaces, 8 disabled bays - less than 1%, totally inadequate
C - 550 spaces - 22 disabled bays - 4% - inadequate

If your example with 43 spaces is significantly over the 6% there may have (at least at time of building) been a legitimate reason for a higher provision. If it matches or is lower than the 6% and is under used then the issue is probably that the destination that this parking is providing for is discriminatory or inaccessible in other ways that make the 5% of the population who need a blue badge spaces feel unwelcome or unable to participate - in which case the remedy is not to reduce the BB parking but to make the destination more welcoming to people with mobility needs.

Unless you have such a peripatetic lifestyle that you are needing to park there on several different occasions 7 days a week, it might just be that your regular times to go there do not coincide with when the BB spaces are needed. Eg a big leisure complex may have regular sessions for disabled swimmers that are at times when you are elsewhere, and all the BB places are needed then.

I did probably used to think like this too. So many disabled spaces but then my child got leukaemia and we qualified for a badge which I’m so thankful for. Seeing free disabled spaces is such a safety blanket at the moment. There are rarely any free at the hospitals we go to but always extra in supermarkets. Maybe the allocations are a little ‘off’.

No

Did not count all the spots, but after al the comments it has to boil down to bespoke numbers for a given region/town/type of establishment. So a lot of factors, mere percentages mean nothing it seems.