It’s a parking one

[JaceLancs]

Our local council has just resurfaced a car park I use regularly and brought in charges - not the end of the world but AIBU that they’ve shrunk the spaces so much that I can’t fit my car in any more? It’s not even a huge vehicle
I struggled to get out of it myself without clipping someone else’s door - there are no parent child spaces either just disabled so
have no chance with DGD

Firstly I’d like to give you kudos for posting an actual photograph. With parking ones I expect a diagram but this is next level.

I’m surprised they’ve made them smaller given that cars are just getting bigger and bigger.

Historical minimum width for council parking is 2.4m, with many upgrading to 2.5-2.6m due to bigger cars. How wide is that space? It looks about 2m. Lodge a complaint with the council. Escalate if need be.

I know that car park but I don't use it very often because it gets so busy.
Hopefully the new charges have stopped the full day parking issue but its crazy that the council would do that although it's not surprising. The area has a lot of big cars plus older people so its really unfair. Definitely report. Surely other locals will have done so as our FB pages are usually full of complaints 😂

I'd raise it with others locally and see if you can appeal to the council collectively.

Wonderful parking by the way @JaceLancs

I fully feel your pain here. What scares me is that the risk of the “forward parking only” types who swing in trying to centre themselves in the space and end up clipping your offside front wing, then driving off in a huff leaving no note. That’s guaranteed to be on the increase here.

I don’t see the problem. If the car park is overused it is better that they try and get more cars in. People with extra wide cars can park elsewhere.

Do you really need the problem explaining to you?

Complain to the council OP.

By making the spaces smaller and charging, they can send officers to check cars. Now the spaces are smaller people are more likely to park out of the lines, which is also fineable. So more errors mean more money

Well I know a few tight car parks. Try London Zoo. We only had a problem when the car next to us parked over the line. Maybe a problem if someone is on their own with a baby.

But this is new, so ideally theyd have widened not narrowed tje spaces. My pickle supermarket has just created a 6 inch gap around each space, double lined. Obviously will have lost a few in the process but its never 100% full, far from it, so ther than maybe a week at Xmas it makes it much better for everyone and reduces pressure on p&c spaces and disabled bays as some people can manage in a 'notmal' space. Rightly or wrongly, many cars are now much bigger than previously, even 'small' cars are now more like a standard family car would have been in the 80s.

OP has a small car and it fills the space to the lines with no room to get out. It's useless to anyone except a lone slim adult.

Or someone with a smaller car. The cars on either side of OP have space left.

@Essexpanhandler thank you!

@OkOpal I’m assuming the county in name helped! I will email local council - perhaps they want to pay for the scrapes to my car doors

Thank you @JacquesHarlow - I’ve always viewed parking well as a personal challenge - even before the days of cameras etc I could squeeze my car into spaces others shied away from!

@Yetone the cars either side of mine weren’t much different in size, but were nearer to the line on respective other side to where I parked

And there are more people with disabilities/health issues driving, and not all of these will have a BB, and more people with car seats to get in, so that's another reason they shouldn't be getting smaller spaces.

I agree.

Since having part of my knee replaced some years ago, I can't bend it as much as I used to be able to, so I need to open the door wide in order to get in and out of the car. I had an A4 and it was incredibly difficult to get out in some car parks (looking at you, Tesco!) so I downsized to a Polo.

I don't think it's really made it any easier. People have such big cars now that they almost fill a standard-sized space in the car park at my local Tesco.

I can walk fine, so there's no way I'd qualify for a blue badge. I've been seriously tempted to use a P&C space occasionally.

Self-righteous sorts love to berate people for having cars that are any wider than a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, but one of the main reasons why family cars are so much wider these days than they were in decades gone by is because of vastly improved passenger safety. They're literally rebuking people for wanting to reduce the chances of their children dying in a the event of a crash, hence the legalities that inevitably make modern cars bulkier.

By not only bringing in charges, but also reducing the size of the spaces, they're obviously solely focused on increasing revenue and not bothered at all about serving the people of the town who keep the local economy going. Hopefully, everybody will quickly realise that the car park is no longer practical for use and will abandon it - then the council can see the total of their income for the month from that car park, against the cost that they've just spent on it, seriously plummeting.

They do look very small.

But if the car park gets used (and therefore they collect the charges) I doubt they’ll care much about a complaint that the spaces are small. There’s no required minimum size.

Councils - like the general populace - are set in their idea of a binary of people, whereby everybody is either a blue badge holder or otherwise young, fit and completely able-bodied.

In reality, there are loads of us disabled folk who aren't 'disabled enough' to qualify for a BB, but who really struggle massively with arrogant ignorant car park design like this. Our local council car park has minimal machines, but they're always breaking - with no warning (such as a bag over them that can be seen from a distance), meaning you often have to walk around the whole car park before finding somewhere to get your ticket from and then back to your own car to display it. I end up exhausted before I've even got anywhere near to the shops.

So many councils genuinely seem to assume that the people they are supposed to serve are the enemy, and make their disdain for us all crystal clear.

If the other two cars were both off centre, did that mean the spaces the other side of each were unusable? If thats happening, OP, maybe get photos to show them they’re losing money by their attempt to extract more.

What make is your car? It seems odd yours fills the whole space but other similar size cars still fit within the lines but with space to at least one side. I think the space you are in has somehow been marked up smaller than the others.

@ErrolTheDragon - yes the car each side were not centred in their space so leaving little room for their neighbours

@BluebellBeth its a VW Passat so average saloon size - anyone with a bigger car or van would have no chance