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?

I agree with you, but I have never had a house with a drive 😂. My house is on a very narrow road of Victorian terraces, pavement parking on both sides necessary, Billy big balls lives opposite us and sells used cars so often has several parked around, and next door to him is an HMO, which TBF, I think only has one car owner currently. My youngests school is surrounded by 1960's houses with drives, lots of pensioners who deliberately park their cars and leave them outside the house at school pick up time because they are just incensed about the school traffic. One guy always comes out and asks me to move so he can get into his boot if I park close to his, to avoid his drive. Once he's got his pretend item out the boot I drive it back close. I think a good system would be one parking permit per person who pays council tax.

OTOH, the shops close to my house that I drive past on the way home, never have parking spaces outside. The nearby roads are all permit passes only because it's next to a football stadium. This means I very rarely use these local shops and businesses. If it didn't have permit parking at all times, it would help local businesses. So I do think my biggest annoyance is people not using their drive.

It was you with the strawman argument, not me 🤣
Calling the other poster an activist as they suggested car ownership a hassle

I was pointing out car ownership is a hassle

then you admit you agree 🤦‍♀️

What is annoying is that councils are allowing planning permission for housing developments with very little off street parking per household.

We lived on a new build street before and the parking was a nightmare. Several times our bins weren’t collected because cars were blocking access for the refuse vehicle. One time I phoned the council to ask them to come back later to collect the bins, they initially refused but I listed various new estates where they have allowed planning where there is inadequate parking and thus are creating this car littering problem and they came later to collect the bins.

Now we live on an older street with driveways but you still have people with lots of cars because of grown up children. There are houses that have recently converted garages but have extra cars parked on the road, which seems illogical to me.

What is annoying is that councils are allowing planning permission for housing developments with very little off street parking per household.

That seems ok to me. And there should be residents parking for the street.

Yes it can but for it to be viable it also needs to be safe and for there to be proper secure storage at the destination.

In many locations at least one of these doesn't apply.

And a person needs to be able to secure their bike securely at home, again not always possible.

This is the solution. Have permit parking and restrictions on the permits. People will definitely use drives then !

No it shouldn't be allowed. He has 2 sons who will be driving soon and they have already said they will be getting a car and a work van each which they intend to park in or around our estate. Our lovely little area has become their personal industrial estate. They already encourage their mates to park their souped up cars near our homes as its deemed safe, so all day we are also plagued by their cars revving up and this awful deep rumbling when they are sitting letting their engines tick over. They are a nightmare and they don't give a shit.

If you dont want to cycle, you will always find reasons not to, but bike storage is a very weak one given how many people keep their bikes outside.

Communal bike storage units? There are two on my street alone. You rent a space in one from the council.

All on-street parking should be permit controlled with every space dedicated to a specific house. Non-car owners could sell their space back to the council who would then be able to lease them to any other resident of the street for a fee.

We have shit public transport, is the over-riding problem. I live in a village with one (late or unreasonably early) bus an hour, the last at 4.45. Of course all people with a job have their own cars. There are new housing developments planned with no proper parking. When questioned the developers say it will encourage people to use public transport. Of which there is none, but that’s not turn developer’s problem, and it meets national guidelines for getting cars off the road.

Where I live, people parking on their own drives actually increases the parking issues. The houses are narrow Victorian so the front drive can only fit one car. So when someone tarmacs their front garden, and pays for a dropped kerb, it means the road space outside their house can no longer be used by anyone else. Some sections of the road are pretty much all dropped kerb. When they are not using their drive, nobody else can use that section of road for parking on.

The only way it increases overall parking space is if they have two cars and one is on the drive and one is in front of the drive. But I don’t see that very often.

The pavement ends up being mostly sloped which is harder to walk on, and I find it quite sad that loads of front gardens have been dug up and paved over, reducing biodiversity, increasing the pressure on drainage systems, and adding to the temperature during heatwaves.

I think the answers to reduce car use:
better public transport, better cycle parking for people who don’t have gardens (there’s a public cycle storage unit on most streets round here) and better cycling infrastructure.

Cheaper than public transport in my area and unlike the bus it runs from my road the bus is a good 20 minute walk away goes in the wrong direction and at the wrong time how exactly am I supposed to get to work for 8.30 when the first bus is 8.30? Its not like I dont use public transport im currently on the train is just had to drive to get to the station (zero buses on a Sunday) and even if there was a bus i would have to take two to get there ridiculous situation

Yes that's what I mean. There's one in the city a few miles from where I live but not in the town 2 miles away that I could cycle to if there was somewhere secure to leave a bike.

It's not an excuse @Flamingojune lots of people have bikes stolen so it's something people want to avoid.

I was referring to supermarket deliveries

And lots of people don't. Cars get stolen too

Cars are needed in London. Buses don’t turn up, you have to wait another 12 minutes.

bus usage in London is down, and Khan keeps cutting and stopping routes in London so we have to wait longer for crowded dirty smelly buses.

When looking for this house, no parking space was a deal breaker, and let’s be honest if we have to move out of London because getting around London gets harder we will go. Two of our three children have left London as they have been able to get a better work/life balance.

Cars are needed in London. Buses don’t turn up, you have to wait another 12 minutes

I never know if people are taking the piss when they say things like this. Like a TV programme that said the night buses in London are 'only' every 30 minutes.

Meanwhile the rest of the country would kill for a bus every 12 minutes and are thinking 'what's a night bus'.

Cars are needed in London. Buses don’t turn up, you have to wait another 12 minutes. 😂It's been 12 years since the last bus went through this village.

When you are used to multi buses on the same route, 12mn feels like a long time.

Bus A might come every 15mn, but as you can also jump in Bus B, C, D and E to cover your journey, it feels more frequent. When you end up with no option, 12mn feels long.

30mn is ridiculous. Lack of public transport out of London is not an excuse, we should improve public transport, not reducing London ones.

No we don't need cars in London, there's nowhere to park! Buses and taxis would be a nightmare if we had more traffic.

That is in no way comparable to living in a village or even on an estate in a town where your next bus is in an hour. Or 2 hours and 15 minutes. Or on Thursday. Or never.

You choose where u live. “The village” I grew up in has about three buses a day, yet less than half hour walk is a tube station. Another “village” dozens have a bus at all. If I went back there, we would have a car.

On our street we have an HMO on one end and the other end we have a family of 4 where the two kids are adults. They have seven vehicles. One car each and then three work vans.

Person opposite us is two adults with 3 vehicles, so a car each and yet another work van.

Then we have a man who runs a car dealership from his home...

One neighbour does volunteering for a food bank so he has two, sometimes three, cars and then also a particularly long van parked on the street most weekends.

There's also a school at the end of our road so we genuinely can't leave the street by car at school drop off and pick up time.

We are one of the few houses on our street without a driveway. We aren't allowed one as there is a parking bay for two cars in front of our house. The neighbour with a food bank van has a brother who parks in the middle of it so no one else can park in front or behind him. We once asked that they try to park further back so another car could fit and the answer I got was "No. I used to do that but then sometimes another car would park a bit inconsiderately so it was more difficult for me to leave my spot, so I park like this on purpose" 😂 Honestly, we'd assumed he just didn't realise it was meant for two cars. Turns out he had realised. So that was fun.

Most houses on my street have 2 or 3 cars and only ever park maximum one car on the double driveway.

So basically, I'm with you OP!!

Our buses have been cut. There is one on the route now, and now every 15 minutes, Sunday is every 30.

a friend who lives in Walthamstow misses the 48 that was cut out completely, and he blames all the moped for holding up the traffic in Walthamstow as they park on double yellow lines outside McDonald’s waiting for the next job!

Personally if theft of motorcycles was taken more seriously a lot more people in London would own them, but apparently when we work hard to spend £2,000/£3,000 on a mode of transportation that doesn’t take up room or emit much co2, more is emitted charging an electric bike, we apparently have to appreciate that the perpetrator of the crime is in much more need of our property than us!!

Yes I’m a parent. I’m sure there will be many inconveniences, there always is with all big changes of how stuff is done.

I’d imagine you’d have the settings on your app that you wanted one baby seat/one toddler seat or whatever and they’d stay with the car?