Parking: thinking logically, are those of us with drives (and who use them) the biggest CFs of all?!

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

I love a good parking thread as much as anybody, but as I was reading the one the other day (by the man with the upset wife), it got me thinking.

As we all know, nobody has any more right to use the space on the public road in front of their own house than any other driver of a taxed and insured vehicle does. As we always affirm with one MN accord, if you want your own guaranteed space, you have to buy or rent a house with a drive.

HOWEVER, by having a drive, that then means that nobody else is legally allowed to park in front of it. Therefore, the upshot is that a potential parking space on the public road effectively ends up being reserved exclusively for your household's sole use (apart from by moving traffic passing across it). Added to which, it's an unwritten rule (never challenged AFAIK) that, if there are no yellow lines or white H-marks there, YOU can park across it as you're only potentially blocking yourself/your own household in.

Ergo, you've bagged yourself the legal right to your own exclusively reserved parking space on the public road, just because of the layout of your property and the fact that the building itself is set back sufficiently from the road - whether you park in that space, use it for access or both; or indeed if you don't have a car or any driving visitors and so it remains permanently empty and reserved for your exclusive (non)-use. If you hadn't had a property sized and laid out in such a way to allow off-road parking (and possibly paid a one-off fee to the council to drop the kerb), there would have been another parking space (maybe two) on the road available for anybody and everybody to use - first come, first served.

Is this fair? Is it those of us with drives who are actually the biggest, most selfish CFs of all - all the while congratulating ourselves for being self-sufficient and considerate by not territorially taking up a space on the road like those without drives?!?!

@EmmaGrundyForPM I also think that a one house - one car policy ought to apply in urban areas but there would be a huge outcry if that was the case!

In that case myself and DP would never be able to get to our work places. He works 40 mins in one direction I work an hour in the other!

new builds are designed by a computer to fit the maximum number of houses in a development and hence maximum profit.

That's one of the big problems. Anything that doesn't add tangible pounds to the amount they can charge for a house is not remotely considered. Every householder in each of the houses might struggle every day for the entire lifetime of the house with spaces that are just 6 inches too narrow to be of comfortable use or application - maybe the difference between being able to get furniture upstairs or not or bashing your knees every time in a cloak-room toilet - but if they can plan them that way and get 201 houses on the land instead of 200 for that one extra one-time sale, they simply don't care. Even when they're built with garages - with commensurate higher prices in recognition of this - it's taken as a given that you wouldn't actually expect to be able to fit a standard-sized car in it - ironic considering that many older houses have very ample parking in their garages, although they were originally built when cars were all much smaller.

Where I live I have a drive but also a wall outside my property, Cars normally park next to the wall .we can get the cars out but it can be awkward. I've said to dh we should have the drive re done and wall taken down then cars won't be able to park there .
I'd think it would probably annoy a couple of neighbours if we did that because there is very limited parking on our street , not everyone has a drive and some people have 2 cars & vans etc .
But we bought a property with a drive and if we wanted to take the wall down we could . If others want a drive they can they just choose to park wherever so no I'm not cf.
I try to be considerate at parking but a lot of people don't, I even get people blocking the driveway anyway .

I think that one-house-one-car sounds reasonable in theory, but our society is now so based around needing a car for each adult (outside of major cities), that it just isn't practical in many, many cases.

Yes, the majority of households always used to have a maximum of one car per house, but that was in the days when it was common for women not to go out to work and to have a full range of local shops in close walking distance. That's one reason why so many women of previous generations never learned to drive. Now that most households have two adults, both of whom can and frequently need to drive, that's no longer the case. Pesky women, eh: expecting to drive and have cars themselves and clogging up the roads with their school runabouts, causing problems for the men with their lovely Big Important Cars....

We thought about reducing down to one car but
Like I posted earlier, now that I have to drive to a different office and can't walk there I have to drive. Like other posters have ,said, we don't all live in London with frequent, cheap public transport. Some of us have to drive .
The last bus in one direction from me is 5pm. It also doesn't start until 8am and that's only Monday to Friday.

People are so addicted to car travel

Unless you are in London or one of the other large cities with excellent public transport, it's not so much an addiction - it's a necessity.

Can I assume that this is a training session for when the schools are open and the Great Parking War resumes??????

The worst is dense modern housing with just enough frontage to park two cars in so most of the street (often cul-de-sac) is dropped kerb so there's nowhere for a visitor/ delivery to legally park.
Problems on small terraces pre-dating car use are understandable, but modern regulations are completely unrealistic to modern life. Plus they are assuming circunstances such that families will walk young childen two miles to the catchment school which simply is not viable for working households that don't have time to spend an hour x2 walking children backwards and forwards. Car ownership is so often the only practical way to fit life in to 24 hours in a day.

My housemates at uni made me laugh moaning about parking. 8 people in the house. 4 car owners. One wheelchair user with motability. 3 worked nightshifts not compatible with buses. 1900s semi with minimal front garden, few driveways, none for ours. They didn't register that being one of 4 cars for a small frontage was a major part of the problem

I think one house one car is fair if the house doesn't have a drive, garage or designated parking space.

When I bought my house I had to sacrifice other things in order to afford a place with a big enough drive for our vehicles. The access to my drive is only about two car lengths but I have had five cars on it. I don't feel I am a CF because I paid for it and I'm keeping them out of everyone else's way. I felt that was the responsible thing to do.

My parents live on a street with no drives, garages or parking spaces. They have one car. Their next door neighbours have three cars and regularly park in front of my parents' house, so my parents park somewhere else; my parents then regularly get people knocking on asking them to move their car (it's quite distinctive so people know it's theirs). They wouldn't dream of knocking on next door and asking them to move their car, but realistically the NDNs are the cause of it all by having three cars in a street of 2 bed terraces.

You can’t park in front of my drive on the road as road too small and busy and there's double yellows. So no cheeky fuckery from me. Not that I really agree with what you’re saying anyway

I also think that a one house - one car policy ought to apply in urban areas but there would be a huge outcry if that was the case!

This is another one of those nice in theory policies that couldn't ever actually work. Can you imagine the bureaucracy that would be needed, never mind all the enforcement and cheating? We can't even enforce people needing a proper licence and insurance to drive.

Our street is exactly the situation in the OP. 1936 semis and terraces with large front gardens, and more and more people have had drives built.

Where we used to live a drive was 8ft wide, so every house had a drive plus on road parking. Here they have the whole front converted. Each drive takes 2 parking spaces off the street. You can fit 2 cars onto it but most of the people who've done it only have one car.

Having effectively stolen 2 spaces from everyone else, one in particular then parks their car on the road, outside a house with no drive, to "reserve" their space for their regular visitor.

We can fit both our cars bumper to bumper outside our house, but only because we own both. It is incredibly frustrating to get home and find someone else in the space because they have to be so close to the other car that they have blocked us in. They seem to think it's OK because we park like that.

I really would like a rule in our street that anyone with a drive is not allowed to park on the street, because they already have their allocation of space. As the law stands I can't park in front of their house as I'be be blocking their drive, but they can legally park in front of my house and leave their drive empty.

My neighbour (no drive 2 cars) on the left hand side parks right up to the very edge of my drive in front of my house, it's not possible to park in front of my drive without overhanging my neighbour on the right hand side drive. So I don't feel like a CF as one car, one parking space on my drive.

Drivers are the biggest CFs, regardless of where they park.

We need to redesign our society and neighbourhoods so that people don't depend on cars, and stop making choices about where to live, work, and play based on their availability.

@rosiejaune it's sometimes needed to drive to work though. We could no way afford to live near to where I work it would be impossible!

1 car.per household for those suggesting it can't work for everyone. I do shifts which sometimes finish after midnight or start at 4am. I need to drive. DH travels to clients to heavy equipment. No way could he carry it on public transport.

We need two cars.

Totally agree. A house a couple of hours down from us got the front garden paved (bloody ugly) and a dropped kerb. The drive is tiny, and because it is wide rather than deep, it deprives the street of two parking spaces.

WITH heavy equipment that should say.

I don't get it. If you don't have a drive, the spot in front of your house is probably going to be taken by someone else, which means you end up parking in front of somebody else's house, who then has to park further away and so on...

No space is won, but it's a disturbance for everybody. When private drives guarantee you a spot in your own house, that frees spots in front of your neighbours.

When private drives guarantee you a spot in your own house, that frees spots in front of your neighbours.

Our road is not only used by residents, but by visitors, people working nearby, tradesmen. If someone has a drive and heads off to work, that space is unusable all day when they don't need it and others do. If they go on holiday for two weeks, the space is out of action for two weeks.

I paid for the space to store my car and that cost me extra

If I decided to store my collection of broken fridges on the road, I'd soon have complaints and would probably be prosecuted for fly-tipping

Of course you would because the road isn’t intended for broken fridges and they’d never move. The smugness of the drive owning never fails to amaze me.

Based on my situation, I’m going to say YABU. We can fit at least five cars on our drive and its entry is from a single private road, so not possible to park outside the house on the road. If we couldn’t park on our drive we would have to drive down the road to where it is the public highway and there is a house owner there would deserves multiple parking threads on here about how obsessed she is with the two spots at the side of her house which is free parking.

I paid for the space to store my car and that cost me extra

Maybe so, but none of that money goes to the neighbours to compensate them for the inconvenience of you "reserving" a space on the public road.

none of that money goes to the neighbours to compensate them for the inconvenience of you "reserving" a space on the public road

Why should it? The PP is not taking anything from them because they didn't own it in the first place.

If we all started having to pay others for "inconvenience" then I'd be sending invoices to my inconsiderate neighbours, dog owners who don't pick up after their dogs, dickhead drivers, people who can't judge what 2 metres is.... etc etc. And I'm sure people would be sending invoices to me too! We all share the world, there are inconveniences everywhere.