To think if you buy a house without parking in London you should just suck it up?

[fartotheleftside]

I live on a street in London without parking, very small front gardens so no opportunity to put in driveways. Parking on the street is free and unrestricted.

neighbours are constantly complaining that they can’t find a parking space on the street and I’m like, well, what did you expect?

Some of them complain that they have to park a few streets away and then walk to their house with shopping bags. Meanwhile I’m happily walking from the bus stop with buggies and bags daily,

We’ve never even considered having a car in London, public transport here is great and we cycle when we can. Uber is always available if needed. But everyone else on this street seems to think a car is a necessity.

some of the neighbours have now got electric cars and so need a parking spot right outside their house for the cable, which of course goes across the pavement, and they get so stressed out when they can’t park outside their house… it seems madness to me.

am I wrong in thinking that, if you choose to both have a car in central-ish London and then not buy a house with parking on top of that, you should just shut up about it and park where you can? If I hear one more complaint I’m going to go crazy.

Not just London surely.

I think maybe they're just making small talk? Most people can relate to parking issues so it's a reasonably neutral conversation topic that makes a friendly noise to you without meaning anything. But it is a bit boring when you don't own a car.

No, anywhere where houses have no off street parking.

YANBU but tell car owners that.

In fairness the world has changed since the Victorian/Edwardian eras in terms of street layout, people's activities and public transport. So have people's expectations and sense of entitlement.

Having worked in a London council they could always apply to have the street turned into a "Resident Permits Only" zone, if for example there is a school, hospital or tube station nearby and people are parking there all day.
They would have pay for it though and for their parking permits.
On the subject of electric cars and charging this is a nettle someone is going to have to grasp at some point in terms of how people charge their cars if they don't have a driveway or designated parking space if the government are insistent that they are going to be the only cars on the road.

If nothing has changed since they moved then yes.

People are complaining a lot in our street because they rebuilt the school and the main pedestrian entrance is now in our street, so we have had a boom in traffic. Complaining about that is fair game imo as the houses and original school have been here 100 years - the new layout only happened last year.

I really don’t want this as it will make moving vans, deliveries etc very annoying to deal with. Also surely just privileges those who can pay?

I grew up in London and even then (over 40 years ago) you weren't guaranteed to be able to park outside your house and we often had to park nearby and walk. Obviously it will be worse now as more people own cars. But people moaned about it even back then! It's just something people moan about!

Have they not heard of supermarket delivery services , your grumbling neighbours?

I don't think it's legal to run a cable over the pavement from your house to charge your car. It's also a trip hazard.

Well yes I suppose you could say that if you sign up for something you shouldn’t then complain about the natural consequences of that thing. But we all do. I moved to the U.K. from a country with a much better climate. I knew I was coming to somewhere where it is grey and rainy heaps of the time. Doesn’t stop me from complaining about the grey and rain along with everyone else though. Lots of people support indifferent sports teams and will happily spend hours complaining about how their team played poorly (rather than just swapping to support a better team). Taken to extremes, you could say that most of us on MN chose to have children so we should never moan about them, but if we didn’t, there wouldn’t be a Mumsnet!

I live on a street with only on street parking for terraced housing - and have never heard anyone complain about not being able to find a space.

Delivery vans just stop in the middle of the road and no one comments on that either.

All numb to the parking realities of London living here. Albeit, I wouldn’t be surprised if 50% didn’t have a car.

The nettle has been grasped in many different ways. It'll be interesting to see which wins out. My road of Edwardian terraced houses has charging points installed on the pavement and accessible to anyone who wants to use it.
Other authorities are trialling different strategies.

YANBU to be annoyed about the cables. I drove an EV for a while where I had no off-street parking and no ability to charge with a cable across the pavement - I relied entirely on public chargers and the ones at the petrol station, and that was a few years back when there weren't as many chargers as there are now. Your neighbours need to download ZapMap and plan charging time into their week, as just another errand. I used to go down to the Shell garage on a Sunday morning, read the papers with a coffee while charging up for the week. Anyone living and parking in London is unlikely to need to plug in every night, unless they're driving for Uber or something.

@SpanThatWorld the street my brother is on has designated EV charging bays, that are also resident only which I think makes sense as otherwise you'd have people like me parking and charging there as non-residents. You do have to be courteous and move your car when you're full though, and not treat it as just another space.

I love when I happen to park next to a lamppost with a charger built into it, though they don't always work.

@Mosaic123 lots of people put the charging cable inside one of those black and yellow rubber cable protectors where it goes across the pavement, which at least tries to address the trip hazard part of it. It really shouldn't be needed though given the growth in the number of public fast and ultra-fast chargers, and the larger ranges of EVs.

Our street now has chargers connected to the lampposts to allow those with on street parking only to charge cars. Took a day to fit and seems like a logical and low cost solution.

Wow, do you live on my street? it's all people ever go on about and we live in a borough without residents parking so always spaces, even if they're a few minutes away.

I guess I said London because there’s just no need to have a car here since the public transport is so good. It’s not like they don’t have alternatives. I know it can be different in other parts of the country .

You could make the same comment about people buying houses with one parking space when they have several cars. You know what the circumstances are when you buy the house. It hasn’t changed.

People have very low frustration tolerance.
I lived with three toddlers and sometimes had to park a street away. Annoying, but hardly the end of the world.

I’m surprised you don’t have parking permits.

guess I said London because there’s just no need to have a car here since the public transport is so good

Its really depends on where you are & where you want to get to.

We have residents' parking a couple of hours a day and yet I still have to park streets away if I time it wrong. That's life- people want to park on my road to go to the excellent local shops. If it wasn't for those people, the shops would close.

Your neighbours sound like they're just enjoying a whinge- same as people complaining about the weather. The only rightful grumble is if people are dumping cars there for months on end- if so, you can get the council to tow them.