Pavement parking

[Juliepilsworth]

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/642947?fbclid=IwAR2SNSlX2LEsEsql3oo2pW9MYbL739yY10Vv7NonmuuHxz8QYc39rB5C-aI_aem_Ac6p00Bj2rRfYipDrcDovByO_hUjC_IXZTFBJMPH_K69E6PKGt_Si7RqWKxcI8Oc6r0

Pavement parking forces all pedestrians into the road putting lives in danger

Signed

The problem is that on some streets pavement parking makes perfect sense. There are some around here where the pavements are wide but the roads narrow so cars park with two wheels on the pavement, leaving plenty of room for a wheelchair.

On my parents 1930s road, there isn't enough off road parking for the standard two cars per household, so they park on the pavement. There's room for a single pedestrian but no more - but it's a quiet residential cul de sac so everyone's happy to walk in the road if they need more space as there isn't actually that much moving traffic.

Essentially, the law needs to say "don't be a dick for this particular road at this particular time" but that's hard to legislate for.

(People who block the pavements on busy roads should be in the stocks.)

I’m a bit torn on this. I don’t think you can create legislation for something that relies on common sense. I can remember pushing a pram around and having to walk on the road around a selfishly parked car but there are roads near me that have terraced houses where there is no room for parking. It seems that unofficially the rule is everyone parks on one side of the road and that seems to work.

This is also a problem on some new estates where they might give one parking space for a 3/ 4 bed house in an area with no public transport because they want to be greener. It’s a lovely idea to not drive everywhere but where there’s no public transport people have more cars than dedicated spaces.

The problem is that on some streets pavement parking makes perfect sense. There are some around here where the pavements are wide but the roads narrow so cars park with two wheels on the pavement, leaving plenty of room for a wheelchair.

Same here.

Yes developers should be forced by law to make more parking spaces, we know that reducing them makes zero difference to people using cars. It’s purely them trying to squeeze more houses on a plot of land

Needs to be better worded. On some streets where the pavement is very wide it's ok - especially if the pavement has trees growing through it every 5m and the car in between each pair of trees is no more intrusive or narrowing than the tree. Something like making pavement parking illegal if doing so narrows the ysable pavement space to less than 75cm at any point, perhaps?

I think it would be better to have a national ban on any road having legal on-street parking both sides if doing so would reduce the road width below a certain amount. We have some terrible streets nearby where the narrow pavements are totally blocked by cars on both sides. It would be resolved with double yellow lines along one side of the street but that would cause a serious outcry among residents.

One of the things in my list of laws I will enact if I get to go back in time and take over the past will be to make it illegal to leave a motor vehicle on a public road for longer than 6 hours, which would require that town and city planners make adequate off-road parking facilities part of all development plans. If it had been thought of at the start we wouldn't be so stuck now.