Neighbours have decided that myself and NDN park some of our cars in another street to make it fairer for everyone. AIBU to ignore the request?

[SumoFarah]

I live on a street with unrestricted parking and few driveways. I know it might sound excessive but my family and NDN family have 7 cars between us. I can’t get a drive out in as the street is really narrow so I would need the space opposite to be empty in order to exit.

A neighbour on the street knocked on my and NDN to explain that our six cars take up too much space and means that:

1. neighbours who finish work late can never get a space so have to park on another street and walk
2. their weekend visitors can never get a space
3. on weekends they sometimes have to park in the middle of the road to unload their shopping and then go and find somewhere else to park

We we’re told that ‘they all’ think everyone should agree to use a maximum of 2 spaces to use as they wish and any further space needed should be used in the free car park about 1/2 mile away.

Also that the two teenagers (one mine, one NDN) don’t need cars as they are still in school so should have no need for cars anyway.

I get that parking spaces are at a premium, and can be frustrating when all the spaces are taken, but I don’t want myself or my dc to walk 1/2 mile in the dark (or the light, for that matter) just to placate the neighbours when there’s a space available. All our cars are pretty much used on a daily basis.

NDN told the messenger neighbour that it’s first-come-first-served. I do understand the annoyance but don’t agree with the suggestion because some houses only have one car and some houses don’t have a car, so should balance out in theory, but obviously doesn’t in practice.

Would I be unreasonable to ignore the ‘request’?

Suggestions welcomed.

We have 5 cars in our household, have a garage and driveway that can accommodate them though which makes all the difference. I think myself it would be a piss take if I just parked them all in the street. YBVU! You need to park a couple in nearby car park really, give others a chance.

Exactly, housing is not affordable for a lot of young adults. They need to live at home but also drive to work.

Why is it excessive to have 7 cars between two separate households?

If adult children are still living with mum and dad and all in the household need cars to get to work then that's easily 4 cars per household for an average family.

We have three cars and our neighbours have 4.

The retired couple Nextdoor have a car plus their camper van.

Across the road have four cars - again due to both sons still living at home.

I live on a weird sort of close, that's almost a cul-de-sac, but not.

We live down a little path with houses each side, but at the top of the pat h there is a bay for us to park, max of four cars (there are houses on the little path).

The rest of the close is on the road, so they have parking, plus most have back entrances with parking.

Two houses have driveways.

One of the houses with a driveway is owned by a taxi company owner. They extended their driveway, then decided that the dropped kerb for pedestrians (the driveway had uts own dropped kerb the other end), should also be used, so they have two entrances, even though one is illegal

They now park cars down the bit of road between both dropped kerbs, minimising the parking available. They have 12 cars on their drive two in the bay that haven't moved and three elsewhere on the road. They also used up any other spaces with big minivans. A lot have no tax.

The council couldn't give a shit about the untaxed vehicles.

The other driveway owner fixes cars and parks his, along with his transport carriers in any space ge can find. He's got untaxed cars on the road, again reported, but now just takes the licence plate off so he avoids any penalty.

I can't say how much I hate living here.

Obviously it would be a pisstake to park them all in the street, because you have a driveway! The OP does not have a driveway!!

Good question, and one I’d not thought of 😊.

I think a lot of people on my road have lived here for quite a long time, as there seems to be an informal kind of committee. Not that long ago we had food caddies delivered and after 2 weeks we all received a note to say we shouldn’t use the caddy because they look untidy, fly (not park, haha!) in the road and the foxes open and spill out the contents. I wasn’t bothered by that intrusion, as I never used the caddy because I gave it to my nephew to keep his Lego in! 😁

This is a complete piss take. A road being used for a business is wrong. But adults living in the house and using their own cars is completely different.

You're taking the absolute piss imo.

Not that it is relevant to the OP’s predicament, but on-street parking should be illegal.

I wouldn't change a thing. If there are spaces, park there. If not, use the car park. That goes for everyone.

You sound like my opposite neighbour who said that it was a pity I had no car so my drive was "going to waste" The drive has gates which are kept locked. She asked if she could park one of her vehicles there. The conversation ended quickly when I offered to research a commercial charge for the service. They and their chiddren have 5 cars. An absolute piss take. I am not going to subsidise their high carbon producing lifestyle.

Why? Not all houses have drives. Mine doesn't, nor does any of the other houses on our street. There's some parking bays, but not enough for even 1 car per household. Where should they park?

Tbh,I’m don’t think having three cars is that rare these days. I would just continue on a first come, first gets basis. It could be that some of those with two cars could also potentially turn into a three car house at some point, so their thoughts might change at that point. I would start becoming fixated on how many houses were cheating and using extra street spaces! Couldn’t be arsed with it..

Well, they can have as many cars as they like. But if they don't have a driveway, they can't park them all outside their house, can they, because there isn't room? So unless they use a car park, they will end up parking them outside other people's houses every day which whilst (usually) legal, is not very considerate.

There must be households out there with four adults who genuinely need four cars. But surely in the majority of multi-car households, at least one or two of these adults could walk, cycle, use public transport, work from home or share a car? These crammed estates without driveways tend to be in urban areas. If a family with multiple cars wants or needs to drive everywhere, such estates won't be the best fit for them, so they might consider moving further out of town to a house with a driveway.

I think as more and more graduates struggle to find jobs it will become more and more common for them to move home and have a car. Houses with 3 or 4 cars are very common round here, either couple with car each and 1 or 2 teens/early twenties or 1 family car and 3 kids living at home. All the ones I can think off are crammed onto sometimes very small terraced or semi drives, often in a carefully timed tetris arrangement.

Personally I don't think its unreasonable for you to have 3. We have 2 cars and currently eldest with a third car, but there are more kids to go so potentially could have 4 on the drive at once. We are currenlty only paying insurance for 2.5 as ds1 is paying half of his. His is about £650, our main car is £450 and second small car is £250. All 3 fit on our drive though and we could squeeze in a fourth.

Train station, uni and secondary school aren't walkable unfortunately and no buses where we live that dont involve a drive to the bus stop. Public transport is terrible outside of cities in this country, I'd happily use it exclusively and not have a car or only one if we could like when we lived in London.

What do you suggest as an alternative, then? That houses be knocked down to create drives/car parks for residents of the remaining houses (maybe yours would be one that's earmarked for it?) or that residents should just not be able to have cars?

In an ideal world, there would be adequate off-street for everybody; but we're a very long way away from that being a possibility.

I once lived in a street (that was one of at least 100 streets in a similar design in the area) that had no room for driveways. If it was illegal to park in the street then there would be no available parking for miles. And as much as I love the idea of a car free town, it just wouldn’t work as the public transport was terrible! No idea what disabled people would do either.

Are you a WUM?

@Politicians247UnderwearExtinguishingService @WafflePlusWord

I hear your remonstrations, but in other countries, notably Japan, on street parking is most definitely illegal. Indeed one needs to get permission from the police to own a car, and said permission requires one to demonstrate that one has a place to park it. I might add that Japan is no less developed than the UK.

And yet the Japanese manage. Funny, that, eh?

It just doesn't make sense to say that everybody can have vehicles but only as long as they fit on the piece of adjacent street of an equivalent width to their house.

What about very narrow and tall houses? Flats and maisonettes? Houses with double yellow lines, crossings or other features outside meaning that parking is illegal or very unsafe right outside their house?

We really need to get away from the bizarre idea that the land where your own home is located somehow entitles you to an equivalent amount of the nearby public road for parking purposes. Your own private home is for your (and your guests') use only. Legal, unrestricted and safe spaces on the public road are for anybody's use.

In the same way that I don't have a right to use my neighbour's drive, just because it happens to be very close to my own home, I also have no right over anybody else to park on the public road that happens to be near to my home. It would be great arrogance to assume otherwise. I could always approach the council and ask if they might be willing to sell that piece of land to me, but assuming that they won't wish to do so, it will not become my property.

Every house or property should be allocated one or more parking spaces and that should be it. People who don't have cars could then rent their spaces for some extra money.

You certainly have a right to carry on but that’s very unreasonable. I had neighbours like you in a street with limited parking. They had 4 cars, 2 of which were massive 7 seaters and hardly got used so were there all the time. People with young kids, pushchairs, heavy shopping etc had to struggle to find parking for a single car so everyone noticed and no one thought well of them for it. But you can ignore all that for sure.

But we're talking about the UK, not Japan! Surely their laws mean that many less well-off people are excluded from car ownership - however much they may need one; it's up to them how they run their country, but we're a different country in a different continent. You might just as well say that Japan should arbitrarily change their major official language to English, on the grounds that we in the UK manage just fine with it!

They also have punitive laws that make it very difficult for people to keep cars of more than a few years old - which is why so many end up imported here, as one of the other major left-hand-drive countries. Naturally, this also favours the wealthy and excludes poorer people - who could not afford the purchase price for new vehicles, however great their need may be.

Others will disagree, but I'm not personally in favour of a society with an approach that officially centres the well-off and deliberately discriminates against poorer people.

Ridiculously entitled. You're not alone, it seems to be a common issue.
I especially dislike neighbours who block the road when they could squeeze another car into the garden, or buy a smaller car.

I remember going to a public meeting about our area becoming a Residents’ Parking Zone, and a woman stood up and went off her nut about how would her adult son run his business from outside her house if he couldn’t park his 5 vans there.

Her street comprises modest terraced Victorian houses.

The lack of awareness that families like hers were the reason the meeting was deemed necessary was bloody priceless though.

The RPZ was approved.

Surely the main grievance is that they had cars that rarely moved; so although they had every right to park them on the street, of course that meant that nobody else got much of a look in to use them?

OP said All our cars are pretty much used on a daily basis.

Then again, plenty of people have lifestyles that necessitate cars some days, but not every day - or even the majority of days. 'Essential' doesn't necessarily equate to 'in use permanently'. Your kettle spends the vast majority of its time not in use, but most Brits would still consider it as essential as the permanently-in-use fridge!