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?

Most garages are too small for cars today anyway.

Cars themselves have got wider due to safety reasons.

New homes are built with tiny garages that even small cars can't fit into.

The idea that this level of car ownership is based on need is silly. Let's not pretend that.

The house in my street that doesn't use their garage only built it two years ago 😅

Three words

No public transport.

Solve that and pedestrian access and ability to walk when a journey can manage that, and you solve a lot of problems.

You wont be getting me out of my car and Im a big walker.

I think new homes should be built with bigger garages so that they can actually put the car in the garage and wider roads so that any cars parked on the road dont have to be half on the pavement. All new estates have poor car storage in the naivety that 'we'll promote less car usage'. Most new estates are in the middle of no where or at least a public transport desert.

Yeah YANBU. The house over the road from me has SIX cars and a camper van. Even using their drive, they overspill hugely onto the road meaning the cars with no drives have nowhere to park.

Three main problems if you ask me:

1. the cost of accommodation means working age adult children cannot move out

2. the rise of cars as a "hobby". At one point my ex's son had three cars. His dad's was parked in the drive, one of the son's was parked in the drive and the others were out in the street (a suburban estate), where he'd work on them, rev them, have his other little car mates round the admire them. Obnoxious prick.

3. developers want to pack as many houses into new estates as possible so they are reducing the space per house, including drives and garages. More and more people have to live in these estates as there are more and more people in the country.

My DD lived on a new build estate where the garage was too small for their (fairly small) car. You could get the car in, but not open the doors, which is no good for families with small children.

And I'd like to offer a special place in hell for all those shops/car parks etc where the parking spaces have been jammed in to maximise the number of cars that can (expensively) park, but only by making the spaces ever-so-sllightly smaller than the average car. My car isn't huge by any means, but getting in and out of it can be a challenge in some of these car parks.

In some ways I agree. Small cul de sac here. One house has 5 cars for 3 adults with 2 on the street. One house has 7 or 8 cars - adult children and their visiting partners with a driveway for only 2 cars. One house has 3 cars for 2 adults, can easily fit all 3 on the drive but choose not to. And they’re just the houses
directly near me. Not sure what the answer is but certainly having more cars than occupants who can drive is selfish and idiotic unless you can park them all on your land

Yep my friend has a new build with a “garage” but I doubt even my Aygo could fit in it. The driveway in front is also narrow (although obviously wider than the garage) and directly next to the neighbour’s drive. If both houses had large cars, they wouldn’t both fit with room to get in and out of the car.

The issue is that they are still allowing developers to only allow one space per house (4 bedroom) plus a garage not wide enough for modern family cars. We have one allocated space in front of aforementioned narrow garage (ideal for the motorcycle ) plus a residential car park for one more vehicle, my dsd has to park on the street. This is fine btw for us but neighbours have 2 adult dc so 4 cars plus motorbikes, beyond have 2 cars and a massive camper van, against covenants but covenant owner doesn’t care, then there’s the guy with a long wheelbase can do big it doesn’t fit in the carpark and he stupidly parks on double yellows on a corner - police and council do nothing despite several of us reporting.

all new builds should have 2 dedicated spots plus visitor/extra parking for additional vehicles and garages should be wider to accommodate modern cars, roads on new estates should be wider so you can park on both sides and get a bus/fire engine through and cars pass each other easily. Can’t solve old roads but get new roads right, we need cars especially those of us not in cities, you can’t get to work without one here

I think the added issue is adults living with parents, so a two car household with even a double driveway becomes three or four. I don’t know if it’s fair to limit cars per household as it restricts people getting to work. But the only other option is to put yellow lines and specific spaces on each street.

I think it’s kind of a circular issue in that people with more cars have to use the street, which then makes it difficult for others to get out of driveways due to space or visibility, so then they use the street, then it spreads further along the road

Garages are too narrow to be useful, and many are converted for more living space.

It's a pain driving down a road with cars parked along it.

I agree with pp, we need a public transport system that makes car ownership less attractive for many. I don't own a car, there are cars parked back to back outside my house, and yet I have nowhere to safely lock up my bike. If just one of those space was designated for bike storage, that's transport for half a dozen people, not just one.

I live in a city, the buses are awful so I walk everywhere or occasionally get a taxi, despite having mobility problems. Yet most of my colleagues drive a similar distance to work because once you've got a car, you may as well use it. They moan about traffic, forgetting that they themselves are contributing to it.

My garage is set up as a gym with a bit of storage space but we have room on our drive for both of us to park so don’t need to use it as intended. Which is lucky really as you can’t actually fit a car all the way down our side drive to reach the garage as the house was presumably built when cars were much smaller! Our infrastructure hasn’t really developed with modern life.

Also Im in London and with dc I do need a car (we have one). I couldn’t do everything needed via public transport as it would take too long. I could if I didn’t work!

All of this plus there are too many obstacles to cycling, which would help reduce car use for journeys of up to a few miles.

Infrastructure is diabolical. Cycle lanes are too narrow, badly designed or outright dangerous. Most places have secure bike storage and no, a metal pole/hoop doesn't count.

Most car drivers hate cyclists and too many drivers drive so poorly, it adds to the danger for more vulnerable road users including cyclists.

Fully agree about public transport. Trains are very expensive and unreliable around here.

Flats are designed differently in other countries, for instance where we are the basement levels (B1-3) and the first 1-4 above ground levels are car parking, usually at a rate of 2-3 a flat. Each flat gets 2, then there are a number of visitor slots. Measures are taken to ensure that people don't use a visitor slot as a 3rd place. Flats then start at the level above the car-parking levels.

Essentially what you end up with is something that looks like a multi-storey car-park for the first few levels with something that looks like (nice) flats for the middle to upper floors. Its a system that works really well.

Another big problems is works vans. Most now seem to take vans home with them, so in addition to their own car, their spouse's car, their adult children's cars, there's also their work van in the evenings and weekends. In the past, works vans were more likely to be stored in works yards/compounds but now organisations seem to want to reduce the size of their yards so force their workers to take their vehicles home to park instead of buying larger business premises. In some streets near us, there are several transit vans or pick up trucks taking up larger spaces than a car would take, often taking up the space where two cars could have parked in front of semi detached houses etc.

I like cycling but don’t feel safe to do it on many roads so don’t.

There are always threads here about cost of living debt etc. Nobody suggests get rid of the car. It must cost at least 300 quid a month to own a car, and that's before you put petrol in it.

Yes they are. A friend of mine is a four car household because her adult children are still living at home. Where I used to live it was a very highly populated area with only street parking and lots of family households had 3 cars.

Why do you think people don’t need a car to facilitate their job. Do you know what commuting can cost?!

When looking for a house, I rejected any properties with neighbours who had vans.

A friend of mine is a four car household because her adult children are still living at home

Thats the issue though which I mentioned up thread. The cost of housing.

New rules in the UK about insulation means that old style single brick wall garages can not be built anymore, new ones have to have a cavity wall which is filled with foam blocks (or similar) - so a garage is automatically narrower 50cm on the inside then it would have been before. Of course with cars being much bigger than before this means garages are not fit for parking in ... which means more parking on the street.