To think pavement parking should be banned

[HoustonBess]

There's a government inquiry into pavement parking, you can submit comments here

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/pavement-parking-17-19/

I absolutely hate pavement parking - it's someone thinking their car not being scratched is more important than me and DD's lives. I live in an area of terraced streets and especially on bin days, you basically can't go out with a pram because it's so bad.

Anyone else want to comment for the inquiry? Maybe mumsnet could submit something on behalf of lots of people?

I'm not making excuses as such - apart from blaming the people who design new builds, allocated visitor parking on a separate carpark and then sell it off after the build is done
But there is no other parking as the whole estate is new build, so every road is the exact same width. Luckily it's a quiet road and you can (as everyone does) walk/push prams up the street
I don't know the solution. New builds need to be designed better with parking, and people need to use their garages?

@chillpizza most have more than one car per house. I often come home at 11.30am from work and would say 50% of the cars are there compared to night time. Lot of retired people, shift workers, multiple cars per house etc

It's really badly designed - the whole area is new build so all the streets are the same
Mix of flats (with parking spaces) and houses but people won't/don't use their garage so only have enough parking for a car per house

Good then the banning of parking on the footway will make them have to use there garages as they should instead of endangering pedestrians because they are to lazy/self important to use their garage

Rent spaces from local companies that have private car parks, rent spaces in supermarket car parks that are not needed 24/7, rent empty spaces on driveways. Petition more actual parking spaces.

Where do you live that has all of this unused, extra space?

Where I live it's just roads and roads of residential houses. No factories, supermarkets, or private car parks.

A small town centre near us the council has just built 2 large blocks of flats with zero parking spaces. Guess where they built the flats? On the town car park!!!!!!!!

Its going to be a massive ballache for me and my neighbour if we get ticketed every time (for me rarely, for next door daily) we park on what a “warden” assumes to be a pavement.

I do wonder where the budget is coming from to implement a ban on pavement parking. I mean actually I think where possible it’s a good idea, but practically, how will it work?

I don’t drive. We are a one car household for driving a 45 minute each way work commute into rural countryside with no running bus service.

However I can go out into my street of 50 houses and count 30 parked currently with 5 still parked on pavements, you telling me they are all disabled/night shit workers? I can you a huge clue they anit and another 30+ cars plus work vans will be trying to park down here by 7pm tonight.

We have petitioned our local cllr who is arranging for more parking to be made available.

Being selfish with your parking won’t solve the issue actually getting up and doing something does. Bet they are/where all asshole parking parents on the school run too

@CocoCharlie83 definitely. But what about visitors? Again not saying I agree! I have one parking space, and a disabled parent who visits me. So I would have to park on the nearest parking at some shops and then taxi home, or park 10 streets away and risk my car being damaged (it's near a hospital and no staff parking, staff cars are being damaged when legally parked, bricks though windscreens etc)

My neighbours have pulled up a border of plants and cut down two trees and paved that so they can get two cars on their drive and still not use the bloody garage

I get it, my parent has a blue badge, and I worked as a carer but there isn't enough space on stupid new build estates 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

The visitors car park was perfect, loads of room and then it got barricaded and someone bought it and fenced it off

The empty driveways is a good thing, a local group has started to match hospital staff up with empty drives so they can park and not have their car damaged which seems a great solution

Our nearest elsewhere is ASDA car park. With fines🤷‍♀️

Or the green areas, but I would really rather have cars on pavements tbh.

You don't need to be disabled or night shift worker to need a car fgs.

Again though. Our two pavements counted together are the width of the road. So either we can park on the pavement or they should make them normal size and add to the road so cars can fit there🤷‍♀️

chillpizza
What's needed is a massive, all encompassing strategy that considers public transport, town planning, accessibility of shops, banks and post office, adequate parking... But this will never happen. We've lost all of our local banks and most of the post offices. No local shops, only big superstores on edge of town. Public transport fairly good depending on where you want to go but still quite a walk to bus stop.

You can't just say ban street parking and then expect people to just manage. You can manage. Good for you. Many more can't.

Clearly you live rurally with potential for parking to be developed. Our council is under pressure to allow house building. They are giving permission to build on the tiniest plots of land. People are selling bits of gardens, disused garages, car parks. Literally every spare plot of land is being built on. There is no surplus land to petition for.

You’d rather have cars on pavements making blind people/pushchairs/wheelchair users go in the road than give up some green space. The selfishness just oozes.

I think Scotland has already passed the legislation so I can’t see any reason why it won’t happen in other parts of the UK. It’s very well supported by disability groups.

We don't have any green space! Well we did but then they built our houses on it. The nearest is the golf course but that's going too
I mean my neighbours ripped up a 10 inch wide border and 2 x 10 year old trees for extra parking, so that's how limited it is

images.app.goo.gl/piEDTGauHUifP7jh9

Saw this on a website - how would a wheelchair user get passed!

chillpizza

I'll give up my car when someone provides me with alternative transport that costs me the same as my car does.

Or should I accept being housebound and dependent so that people can push a pram up and down a pavement that is currently 2 car widths wide and where a car parked 2 wheels on the pavement (as is permitted here) makes no difference to anyone using the pavement?

But what about visitors? Again not saying I agree! I have one parking space, and a disabled parent who visits me.

I agree about visitors spaces at new builds as people in mine use them in order to save having to walk an extra 10 steps or the need to park in there private space behind their house. People can be arseholes with this sort of thing but that doesn't mean pedestrians should suffer especially as its a safety matter and not just an inconvenience of them having to walk slightly further to get around the parked cars.

I am not against using footways for parking where it is wide enough but these should be marked out to stop vehicles encroaching too much onto the footway or road and footways/kerbs could be designed to take the loadings. Or if footway is not wide enough then in some situations where unavoidable 1 side can use pavement parking so pedestrians still have a useable footway.

Brining in a ban would have teething issues but eventually it will lead to less people having cars which would also be good for the environment.

You’d rather have cars on pavements making blind people/pushchairs/wheelchair users go in the road than give up some green space. The selfishness just oozes.

In our area, yes. Considering decimation of green spaces, yes. But again. As I pointed out in the same post - Our two pavements counted together are the width of the road. we fit car and standard wheelchair. Other side fits double buggy with no issues. Quiet road, no problem to cross if needed.

And that's the main point mnay are trying to make here. Countrywide ban would be ridiculous. It should be per area.

If 'elsewhere' doesn't exist, don't buy a house with no where to park a car then complain about it.

We are acting as if we're entitled to park our cars outside our houses - we're not. Pavements should not be parked on unless they have been designated as parking bays - therefore have been assessed officially as not making it dangerous for wheelchair users if you park there. You as a road user made the decision to buy/go to an area you are unable to park safely on. Wheelchair users do not generally choose to use a wheelchair and they have priority over us as road users.

Stop being so entitled and making excuses for your laziness and/or lack of planning.

Countrywide ban wouldn't be ridiculous depending on how it is handled. There could be a ban on parking on the footway if it leaves less than 1m (or a width which makes the footway useable to all pedestrians). There could be a ban with a 6 month lead in time where people could apply for restrictions to be lifted on specific streets/areas, which could be lifted or reduced if safe to do so.

Pedestrians should have more rights to use the FOOTway than vehicles.

YANBU! I don’t mind pavement parking when it’s ‘allowed’ and that’s where they have to park, i.e. on a thin road with no drives. But when it happens when it could be easily avoided, say there is a car park 5 metres down the road, it’s so frustrating. It definitely leaves a ‘I can do what I want and not think about anyone else’ impression of the driver. I’ve had someone come at me full pelt while I was walking down a pavement. It was also double yellows. He drove straight onto the pavement at me. He had the audacity to call me a bitch when I called him out for driving at me on a public footpath! Grrrr wish I had reported it

If 'elsewhere' doesn't exist, don't buy a house with no where to park a car then complain about it.

And if the "elsewhere" did exist when you bought your house but has now been sold off to developers, repurposed as housing, or council has purchased garage blocks and built on the land, thus reducing off street parking and increasing the number of cars in one go- all of that is the fault of people who bought their house 25 years ago and so now they need to get rid of their
car? Yep, sounds reasonable.

I’ve had someone come at me full pelt while I was walking down a pavement. It was also double yellows. He drove straight onto the pavement at me. He had the audacity to call me a bitch when I called him out for driving at me on a public footpath

I've had similar - and then the drivers who have a go at me for walking in the road, despite being able to see the situation.

So the most vociferous (and unreasonable) person posting to this thread doesn’t drive, ergo doesn’t have a car and has no skin in the game. What’s the point of arguing with her? Let her talk to herself.

If 'elsewhere' doesn't exist, don't buy a house with no where to park a car then complain about it.

Don't be so bloody daft.

Not everyone can afford houses with off-road parking. Not everyone can afford to move just because they suddenly require a second car for work. Not everyone lives somewhere where off-road parking exists.

Anyway, it's not those people who are complaining. It's people who think that "elsewhere" does exist that are causing a fuss. This thread doesn't apply to me anyway as we have off-road parking but I know not all houses in my town are as lucky. Only about a quarter of them have garages or off-road parking and there isn't enough street space left in our town for everyone else to park off pavements (and that's assuming they are all one-car households, which, considering we're extremely rural with very poor public transport is obviously not the case).

Countrywide ban wouldn't be ridiculous depending on how it is handled. There could be a ban on parking on the footway if it leaves less than 1m (or a width which makes the footway useable to all pedestrians).

Again, there are loads of places where this wouldn't work. Loads of rural mill or mining towns have narrow pavements and narrow roads - and that's all there is to them. There is no option to park on another street or to leave a metre of pavement. The closest 24h fully on-street parking to my house is in the next town over - which is four miles away. Or you could go in the other direction, except that's 7 miles away.

We have no public buses, a train station that doesn't run on Sundays, public holidays, before 7am or after 8pm - everyone drives because there just isn't another choice if you work elsewhere. The town itself has very little employment so the vast majority of us drive a good 40 minutes to work each day, if not more.