Our car storage strategy in the UK is a joke. AIBU?

[JacquesHarlow]

Note: I'll put the disclaimers at the end of the thread to try and mitigate against the usual "never seen this before OP, you sound overly invested" gaslighters.

AIBU to think that for a small island with a rapidly growing population, our approach to car storage and parking is ... well, a joke?

And that we need to start restricting street parking somehow to stop the households who have three or four cars on the street, making life a misery for others and for visitors?

Hear me out please for a minute.

I admit I have mainly lived in suburbs or zone of major cities. And today, I have a driveway that can park 5 or 6 cars.

However in the nine places I've lived, and the many places I've visited, you see the same things:

• It doesn't matter if it's a street of semi-detached 4 beds, or a row of Victorian terraces, or a new build estate: you find houses not using driveways, parking cars nose to nose, often on kerbs.

• Even if a house has a driveway, the British driver's strange attitude to owning the street in front of their house, means they'd rather park on the road instead of the driveway. Meaning more congestion on the kerbside, fewer places for visitors etc.

• And let's face it, many can't even reverse onto the driveway or pilot their car with enough skill to use it

• Away from driveways, I have visited streets with HMOs where friends are tearing their hair out, people with 7 cars to one house. Imagine what happens to street parking then..

• Or it doesn't even need to be an HMO. Billy big balls can buy vintage pick up trucks and line them up on the street nose to nose and take all available parking. As long as you're within the permit structure, or if no CPZ, then all the cars are taxed and MOT'd? Then you're fine to have as many cars as you want on the street

• Finally, people who have three or four cars, tend to have the "advantage" in situations like this. They usually have one or two cars "in place", so if parking is tight, they can (and do) "shuffle things" around to ensure they keep their road positions.

So, AIBU to suggest another way? Can we limit the number of cars owned to two a household on a street, and with a designated storage place needing to be named for anything over 2 cars? Should all suburban streets have some form of visitor permits so that people aren't parking three streets away because big Billy has to be able to see his pickups from his window at all times? Can we have proper enforcement from councils to ensure wheelchair users, buggies, young people can actually traverse our streets without having to brush past metal which has taken up part of the kerb?

We're a small island with a lot of history. We weren't designed to have two rows of cars parked down either side of suburban and urban roads, with delivery drivers racing towards nervous nellies who then refuse to reverse.

We are however horribly in denial about parking. Councils are addicted to the revenue, or ignore the problems if they do exist, knowing that there's little or no alternative.

All I see on threads like these in the past are people saying

• "My eldest daughter uses her car for work, I use mine, so does my DH, and we have something fun for the weekends. I have every right to my four cars on the street. YABU"

• "You're advocating for 15 minute cities, you will own nothing and be happy, you're a communist, YABU"

Why are we so addicted to car use to the point where anything now goes?

AIBU to ask for a more forward thinking solution to car ownership, where people aren't owning five cars on one small suburban street, without a driveway? Surely car ownership is far too cheap if that's an option for any regular Joe.

What do you think...AIBU?

Perhaps the system used in urban areas of Japan would improve things. If you can’t prove you have somewhere off-street to park your car within 2 Km of your home, you can’t register it.

I have mainly lived in suburbs or zone of major cities.
That's where you have gone wrong.

Ah thanks @senua , it didn’t take long.

Should we all move to the countryside where you are then, and clog up your roads nose to nose with cars so that you can find out what a CPZ is? Wait till you hear about LTNs as well

YABU 🤣

Our London council won't issue parking permits to residents of new build flats, but arguably a car isn't really needed in London. It makes sense, and I wish they would limit the number of parking permits for terraced houses too. Some of our neighbours have 3 or 4. There just isn't room!

Great shout @Elbowpatch

You just know though people would go up in arms, it could never happen here where people demand the freedom to park wherever they wish, and strange unspoken covenants spring up on streets

A big issue is older dc living at home for longer so more cars per household. People with longer commutes, both parents working so again more cars. Houses divided into flats so more cars.

I agree.

It’s weird to think that when cars first started to be privately owned the country just decided it was going to be fine for people to leave them lying around anywhere they liked. The storage issue is out of hand now. I don’t know what can be done about it. The Greens want to ban pavement parking but that is going to cause them hell on earth if they try to actually enforce it.

I don’t think people are parking 3 or 4 cars on residential streets really, unless an HMO.

We are only allowed two permits for our household (albeit only have one car).

Where I live nearly all housing stock is Victorian - so built without cars in mind. No drives.

In the past people kept cars inside garages too, making it easier to store two cars. Many people have now converted garages into rooms, gyms, or downstairs bathrooms.

In our street there are loads of people who just don't park on their empty drives, it's infuriating

It's universal. Any city with streets built with terraced properties, semi detached , were all built before car ownership was common . And certainly before multiple car households existed. To limit the amount of cars a family can have would be unrealistic and impossible to monitor .
Maybe the model where there used to be lockup garages on the grounds of flats should come back .
Otherwise when deciding to live in a street with only off street parking facilities you need to factor in this issue.

Where I live the system is basically what you want. You can’t park on the street without a resident’s permit, and you can’t have more than 1 car registered per adult. So a house with 2 adults - maximum 2 cars. And a total cap per household of 3 cars however many adults live there.

There’s a conversion maisonette near us that uses ROAD CONES (they have 6 of them in the front garden) to reserve the 2 spaces in front of their place.

They have 3 cars so the third at least they do park where there is space but it does my head in how VVIP they must think they are.

Plus they block an e-charging post.

I agree with you about people’s weird obsession about others parking on the road outside their house. They need to get over themselves. And people who don’t use their driveways are annoying, as are people who park in such a way that the pavement is partially blocked.

But I don’t think you can restrict it. Due to factors outside their control, children live at home much longer than they used to, public transport is limited in a lot of places, and they need to get to work.
And I’m not saying that because I’m defensive - we have one car which we park on the driveway.

This is part of the problem. DC can’t earn enough to buy/rent. Poor public transport means a car is needed to get to work or to the train station to park and ride.

New build apartments have one space per apartment but often two people with cars living there.

Unless gazillions is invested in public transport, people (mainly women who do the majority of childcare, school drop offs etc) will be car dependent.

We need to look at solutions like double decker car parks etc close enough to housing and new build estates should be forced to ensure adequate parking.

I’d nick the cones. They’ve been abandoned on a public road after all.

There are homes on my street with 3 cars per household - multiple of them. Often only one of them is parked in a driveway designed for two. It's one of those estates that doesn't really have any pavements, just a couple of little stretches, so people park up there. People, obviously including those with prams, often have to walk along the middle of the road. Dog walkers. Parents taking children to school. Kids out playing. One of my neighbours has a big van they they park right up to the bottom of their grass so the choice is go around the van onto the middle of the road, or walk across their grass.

We have one car (not mine) and half the time they cant get in to the driveway because people have parked up opposite. The other day there was a van parked opposite and a car parked outside next door's driveway and quite literally nobody could get past to drive along the street. People just will not park anywhere other than where is closest to their house.

Some of the issues could be resolved by people just using their brains once in a while and parking at the end of the street where there's a little more space.

Perhaps some of this is exacerbated by the number of adults who live with their parents for far longer than was previously the norm.

Our estate is just over 25 years old. Every house was built with a drive wide enough for two cars and at least a single garage. Seemed like loads of space to begin with.

Over the years though families have grown up and some houses do seem to have 3 or 4 cars since the adult children still live at home and need the car for work. Quite a number of houses have had the front lawn taken up to create a bigger drive

I can honestly say I haven't noticed cases of people using the road in preference to their own drive

And as a community healthcare professional - this is an absolute nightmare for us. I've just moved work patches - from a council where we were able to register our car numbers to be able to park on these residents streets for an hour to do our community visits.... to one where the Council offer the same thing - for £300 a year which I just do not have spare. I spend most of my working days now driving around trying to find somewhere I can park, or dodging traffic wardens.

Think that's something that could benefit from Govt legislation to even the inequalities out on because the impact on my ability to do my job is huge. I would cope with paying say £100, or a tenner a month or something - but £300 is huge and we're being used as a cash cow.

I live in a large town, most homes here have drives and garages and there is generally street parking and paid car parks in town.

It was only when speaking to a car salesman about an EV that it struck me that in cities most people wouldn’t be able to have at home chargers because they have nowhere to plug their cars in. We aren’t really set up for cars in many parts of the country.

Our suburban London council limits parking permits to one per household, and zero if your house/flat is a recent build. Doesn’t solve the problem but seems to help.

I would like to see people charged the equivalent of an annual parking permit for dropped curbs. The take away a parking space so don’t actually increase parking capacity and cause people to pointlessly turn pleasant front gardens into ugly driveways.

There is no unified "car storage strategy" as these things have evolved over time. I think that there could be a case for looking a new builds and new build estates, and legislating to ensure sufficient parking is provided. I know there are rules or guidelines at the moment, but it doesn't enforce a genuine solution as building companies will do the bare minimum and you end up with parking problems regardless.

In urban areas, the answer is to make public transport efficient, cheap and pleasant so that car ownership becomes unnecessary and too expensive in comparison.

That is absolutely outrageous that you are expected to pay for that. Are you not able to claim it back from your employer (really I don’t think the employer should have to pay either, but it definitely shouldn’t be you).

Yes and no

Properties SHOULD have parking facilities, even block of flats manage. It's a choice for developers not to bother, it's easy to legally make it an obligation. You should at least be able to park ONE car.

Too many cars for one house? Who are you to decide who lives where?
If several independent adults need a car each, do you intend to penalise them because they can't afford their own property?

People not parking on their drive has nothing to do with you either - might be to free the space for a carer, for workmen, because twats block their drives (try living next to a school), people can park on the street for any perfectly valid reason. You don't have more right to the street because you decide to go for a cheaper property without an allocated parking space, or you are not sharing your home with someone else who own a car.

Oh some people on this street also have garages that they don't use. There's a house that has the whole front of their house paved so they're still got two spaces for cars, plus a garage. The garage is part of a recent extension, and they don't use it for their cars. The reason I know they don't use it for their cars is because is got a bin shed built right in front of it. I don't know what the point in the garage is.

You’d be very much mistaken. On my road there are three houses where adult DCs live at home and there are three or four cars, this section of the road is Edwardian and no drives. Also in nearby roads lots of people with a two seater, or a camper or off road vehicle, and another car each for two adults. Also very similar where my parents live, and all the houses there have drives big enough for two cars. I hate it.