ugly parking causing frustration

[RoxyMoosic]

Live on a street of semi detached houses. It’s a ‘nice’ area. Most houses have room for 2 cars. Depending on configuration could fit 3, or just 1 if a larger area of garden instead of driveway.

the crux of the matter is that residents are parking on the street. E.g house over the road has room for 1 car on the driveway. They moved in a few years ago and bought the house knowing this. Yet have 2 cars and permanently park 1 on the street outside their house. All in a quite considerate manner btw. But I just think is stupid and inconvenient on their part anyway.

other residents park on the street despite having room on the driveway, presumably because they can’t be bothered reversing in/out every time they want to leave.

house a few doors up inexplicably owns 4(!) cars, with room for only 2 on the drive, with regular visitors too parking all over the place.

when the street is chocked up with cars I just find it so unbecoming and quite frankly ugly . It didn’t used to be like this even 10/15 years ago, when people had only enough cars that they could fit on their driveway…. I feel this was helped by the fact that they were often older couples who only had one car…. and those who invariably buy the house are families and have more cars than they can fit on their property.

so… AIBU to think on-street parking is ugly and ruins the look of the street…?

It’s this attitude that means we are unlikely to reach net zero. If you have absolutely no care for your impact on others or your surroundings (as you’ve paid your taxes) then don’t complain when things around you deteriorate or become less socially enjoyable. We should all adopt you r attitude and see where that takes us as a society.

I couldn’t care less if my neighbours are inconvenienced at the volume of cars I use and where I park it when I pay my road tax to park wherever I want. You need a hobby OP

this is why I can’t wait until councils and government adopt a Japanese approach of “prove you have a dedicated parking space before you can own and insure a car”.

when I pay my road tax to park wherever I want.

you've been scammed - no such tax

You should move to a street with double yellow lines, OP, no-one would park on the street there.

We're unlikely to reach net zero when some of us do jobs that require us to visit multiple clients across the whole of one county and a city.

Utterly impossible to do by public transport. Our first bus isn't 8.30, some of my appointments are nearly 50 miles away.

@LakieLady , here you go with the me, me, me attitude. The point is helping the efforts where you can by thinking about the impacts on others and the environment. You may need to drive but Mr. Joe might be able to flex. You may be more able to park on your drive but Ms. Lily might not, etc, etc.

If it’s all about me, me, me will get no where soon.

The lack of awareness regarding how others need to live on this thread is astounding!

Many young adults can not afford to move out of home, they still need to get to work, outside the big cities transport is appalling... the bus serving our village comes 3 times a day, and none are in time for work ( would need to go into the nearest big city and out again for what is a 10 min journey by car).

People buy houses where they can afford them, although many on this thread feel if you have a semi- detached house you shouldn't have 4 cars 🤣🤣🤣🤣 in the real world people tend to do the best they can in the situation they find themselves in!

One last thing, if it's an old estate ( ours is 60's) we could not get our car on the drive as the car spec it was built for, was much, much smaller (we have widened our drive but still can't use our garage for a car).

I totally agree lots of cars detract from the street "look", but it's one of those things these days - most houses probably run a couple of cars, and you'll have kids leaving home later and they'll have a car too. In my area you'd be hard-pressed to find many residential streets without a few cars on the road.

I do find it annoying when people with drives don't use them, or one household has multiple cars and uses all available street spaces. For that reason top of our "must-have" list in the house hunt was plenty of parking available!

Yes and it's rude to use outside someone's home as a permanent parking space/private drive just because they haven't prioritised parking space or widened the drive into the garden to accommodate more space. Or indeed use their garage full of junk!

Some people are just selfish, especially neighbours when it comes to parking.

I understand where you are coming from OP

Perhaps we could all do with a bat cave to hide the car or take a leaf from Thunderbirds, wasn't there some false trees

we have an estate nearby to me that was built in the late 1960s early 1970s and all the houses look out onto a green area without any road or parking and the garages are at the back of the house behind the gardens.

I guess if a household has 4 cars then they have topiary in the abyss a little way from the garages as there isn't the room in their allocated space.
Its design of houses and layout rather than banishing all cars

topiary in the abyss = to park a little way away

Hilarious snobbery and poor sentence construction often go hand in hand.

‘Topiary in the Abyss’ sounds like Ngaio Marsh novel.

"Hilarious snobbery and poor sentence construction often go hand in hand."

Comments like this put me off Mumsnet and I don't have any difficulties constructing sentences. They also make me worry that people may go about their every day life having such unkind thoughts.

It’s unavoidable really. We live on a street and when we moved here many years ago there were less cars and everybody parked in their drives. Most people have been here 15 plus years. Over the years kids have grown up and got cars and front gardens have been dug up (ours included) to make bigger driveways. It’s not as pretty as it used to be but times change.

They also make me worry that people may go about their every day life having such unkind thoughts.

its their problem and not worth worrying about, sadly they don't and never will get the best out of other people

Reverse into your driveway. It’s much safer.

Our street is like this when they put the jubilee bunting up across the road it resembled a giant car lot

You sound like my neighbour. 🙄