To wonder why people are so precious about parking outside their house!

[Snowflakes1122]

I was driving along a street today, phone rang so I parked up (safely and legally) to answer it.

Next thing I know a woman is outside my car window staring at me, gesturing me aggressively to move my car forward. I look behind and her husband (I assume) was pulling his car off their drive and wanted to park exactly where I was. Despite a half empty street full of parling spots and their double drive.

Why are people so precious about parking outside their house?! Especially when they have a double drive

I used to live in a new build flat which had only one allocated space. Parking in the vicinity was a nightmare, we used to have one 'visitors' space for the entire block and there was lots of what we would call 'tactical' parking to ensure that space was reserved for someone's second car.

We complained to the developer and got onto the discussion of lack of parking on new built estates. Apparently this stems back to a previous governments plans for increasing housing - they deliberately planned to restrict parking so that people would think twice about seconds cars and would take public transport instead. Except that just isn't practical or realistic for most in this day and age. These days when plans are drawn up they're supposedly including better parking.

Yeah I look at lots of flats in new builds in tower hamlets - the borough has a car free strategy and almost all new developments are designated as 'car free' so no underground parking and you are not eligible for residents parking permit for on street.

Most of the developments are mixed - as in some private, some shared ownership and some housing association. But there was a real problem with families refusing to move from their overcrowded run down accommodation to the new blocks because of the parking! If you rely on your car for work people would rather stay in substandard accommodation than to give up their car and source of income.

So tower hamlets has had to relax the rules if you are living in overcrowded accommodation you can keep your eligibility for 1x residents parking permit.

Technically I most of the houses on our (new build) estate have 4 parking spaces. A double garage and double driveway. Some of the houses have 6 parking spaces (a double garage and a drive you could fit 4 cars on). And there are a couple of houses that appear to have triple garages (with attic conversions, complete with dormer windows) making their garages bigger than many people's houses.

However, hardly anyone seems to use their garage for keeping their cars in. We don't put our car in ours either (but we've only got one car and a double driveway and DH would rather store crap in the garage). Lots of the garages seem to be converted into gyms instead.

The houses are pretty big so there are a lot of 3+ car households. The parking areas where you have several of these many car households who don't park in their garages are a nightmare. It's like Tetris watching people getting their cars in and out every day and worse at the weekend when their visitors try to cram their cars in too (rather than using the on-street parking).

There's a (hilarious) residents FB group where mostly people complain about: parking, people driving too fast, the traffic on the main road, and (my personal favourite) teenagers walking through the estate to get to a nature reserve on the other side.

The parking complaints are particularly hilarious because there are a group of people who hate anyone parking in the street. There are some parking bays on the main road but you could also park anywhere that doesn't block a drive as it's just a road with no parking restrictions. I think these people take the stance that parked cars make the estate look untidy and that they make it harder to drive along the road (presumably these are the people 'tearing around in their cars' that some of the other people complain about).

However, some of the anti-street parkers are very cross with the non-garage parking multi-car owning households due to the parking Tetris issue. The ones that keep quiet about that are presumably anti-street parking non-garage-users making them particularly unreasonable.

There's another group of parking weirdos who insist that they cannot use their driveways because they must park defensively on the street to prevent their children being mown down by the people driving too fast. I suspect many of them are secretly not wanting anyone else to be able to park outside their house. The two groups get quite angry with each other.

It's a joy. Truly.

Having spent a year looking at new builds, it's clear the "garage" is just an outside storeroom - you'd never get a car in there. It's quite funny asking the sales agent if the property has a garage, being shown the outbuilding, and saying "no, a garage" ....

However, some of the anti-street parkers are very cross with the non-garage parking multi-car owning households due to the parking Tetris issue. The ones that keep quiet about that are presumably anti-street parking non-garage-users making them particularly unreasonable.

My head hurts

God, I'm always just overjoyed if I manage to park on my own street let alone in front of my house! We chose a house close to the station over a house with a drive, and that's the tradeoff.

I do boggle at our neighbours, who are the only people in the street with a drive which has space for 2 cars. So having paid for a dropped kerb and reduced the amount of on-street parking spaces available, do they park both their cars on their drive? No, they do not.

I will admit to a sense of guilty joy every time their planning applications get knocked back by the council because they would reduce the amount of off-street parking to one space.

My head hurts.

As it should. The weird parking folks defy any actual logic.

I'm not sure it's true that garages have gotten smaller. The new build garages on this estate are all big enough to accommodate a car. You could easily get 2 big 4x4s in our double garage if you were so inclined.

No one in the various streets of 1930s houses I've lived in used their garages either because even if you managed to get the car in, you wouldn't be able to open the door. You couldn't get a car in my mum's garage either (nor could you get a car down the whole length of the driveway to get to the garage). I used to have a ford ka and it wouldn't fit because it was so narrow.

I parked in a street once, and when I returned got a note on the window saying "we saw you perving at our kids you disgusting paedo. Don't you dare park here again or we're calling the Police!" Much as I don't want to be cowed by such intimidation, it did work.... I never parked there again!