Safe Speed Forums

Thats totally unacceptable! Another example of medalling local goverment.

When I move house I won't even consider a property if it has no where to park. Even if it is perfect in all other respects.

What possible objection could they have to parking spaces? Unless they have an anticar agenda on their books. In my view this kind of stupidity will not reduce car use or ownership, as in a world of inadequate, overpriced public transport car ownership is almost essential.

It will only serve to frustrate road users and encourage inconsiderate parking.

Pogo might recall the game of cat and mouse that went on in Telford a couple of years or so ago when the town council introduced parking charges in the main town-centre carparks. Telford actually is just a shopping centre BTW, and parking remained free for many years to lure shoppers away from the more attractive Shrewsbury and greater variety of Wolverhampton.
At the time in question an area of parking outside of the own hall and magistrates courts remained free and round one saw many cars displaced from the now pay carpark up into this free carpark...and onto the pavements, the verges on the road leading up to it, in fact anywhere there wasn't a sign explicitly stating you couldn't park there. Even a couple of small traffic islands managed to get cars perched atop them as the good folks of Telford demonstrated their ingenuity in the face of having to pay for carparking
Round two went to the council who put wooden bollards along the grass verge to prevent people parking there...but they left a chink in their armour.
Determined not to take the hint that this was a no parking area, some geniuses managed to slip around the end of the bollards and still park on the grass, round 3. This loophole was quickly shuttered off in round 4.
Round 5 saw an assault on the pavement parkers as a series of decorative bollards was erected thereon; the pavement parkers persisted until the end when the last piece was inaccessible.
Round 6 started as soon as the round 5 made the pavements unparkonable, the old two wheels on the pavement two on the road trick. No signs to say they couldn't you see Only, with all the cars now partly on the road, maneouvring around became a real pain, partuclarly past the Einsteins who'd dump their cars right on a corner making access for trucks delivering to the cinema and Pizza Hut real tricky.
Ding, ding..seconds out round 7. With the bollards all in place down went the paint, yellow lines and no-parking signs everywhere and anywhere, no square yard was left untouched lest someone manage to stick a Fiat Punto or a Smart car in that valuable little FREE gap
All is now peace and quiet again on the parking front, the whole carpark is now a pay facility with the area outside the maguistartes court being run by a private company. This leaves just a few spaces, marked out with bays, on the no-mans-land between the two battle lines of the council run and private run carparks. And boy are they lucrative

The same sort of thing is happening in Poole, there were problems with commuters parking near the town centre because there are not enough places for them to park.
So the council installed a residents parking scheme (but only gave householders a chance to vote on it) whereby you have to pay to park outside your own house or drive.
So now the commuters have less places to park and the parking scam is growing.

"There's not enough places for peopel to park in teh town centre, what shall we do?"
"Let's remove places and hope that solves the problem."

Yeah.

Shame most of the parking bay lines are wrong.

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Andrew.

I notice outside the Town Hall in Kendal, all the council officers have reserved car parking spaces in the multistory car park, which already has the entire top floor reserved for council use Monday to Friday!

I thought the Government was trying to reduce car use by taking away spaces - that's what the council said when they took away spaces in Kendal.

Surely they should set the ball rolling, and do away with reserved spaces, and put a bike rack in their place?

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Won't be long before they have special lanes for Politburo members ...

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Isn't there one already in the form of the M4 bus lane? (aka Blair lane)

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

MalcolmW: "The government want to promote higher density development so they changed the planning guidance given to local authorities (PPG documents). This allows developers to put in planning applications for sites with fewer parking spaces and more apartments. This suits the developers as they can generally make more money this way.

A local council can get an application of this sort and, with their local knowledge, realise that the parking provision is ridiculously low. However, where in the past they would have rejected the proposal they now have a problem. If they reject it on parking provision then the developer will appeal to the ODP or other government departments - and will win the appeal because the guidance has not been followed. The local council thus agree to the proposal."

I'm inclined to disagree Macolm, 90% of the developers I work for are not happy about this as it costs sales and and lowers the price on the properties that don't have parking, I'm employed by the people who do the ten year house warranties so that should give an idea of our client base.

I know of several developments in Norfolk where parking has been severly curtailed to push the public onto public transport shame that in two cases the bus service doesn't start running for another two years.

Slightly off topic but another gripe of mine is that planning department seem to feel that H&S law doesn't apply to them especially the CDM Regs, the ones I have dealt with seem to act as though they are a law unto themselves.


Trade parking, not against it per se just against the inconsiderate Cr s who park anywhere except thier own house, my folks have a parade of shops just down from them and it has now become the local truck stop, the car park is private and owned by the shop owners. Some of the truck drivers are cycling from 2-3 miles away to get here rather than to the other side of town to the depot.

We also have one individual who parks his van outside his neighbours house, well anywhere along the street excpept outside HIS house, the cheeky barsteward even used his neigbours drive (without permission) when the neighbour was away, bloody van dropped oil all over his drive.

I do remember that at one time when a parking meter was out of order it meant free parking, in London they now suspend the bay - No Parking, thought the idea of parking meters was to help congestion and pay for the upkeep of parking provision ????

Call me cynical but reducing parking bays is a bloody good money earner for LA's

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

That'll be the same Poole that built a park & ride car park, then decided it was for "essential workers" (ie NHS and town hall staff) only.

The council where I live are also trying to install a residents parking scheme. The locals are in uproar over it as that's how they see it, it's just another scam.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Oposite where I work there are 3 new factories/warehouse being built, these have a total of 49 car parking spaces between them (including 2 disabled per unit).

My company is in a simarly sized unit and needs around 50-60 spaces itself. Where are the new workers going to park, the biggest 2 units only have 17 + 2 disabled each.

Aparently the local authorities would only allow the development if they had a restricted number of spaces.

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Nick

It's unfortunate that people get to a certain level of planning and government whereby they forget everything they ever knew about human nature.

Businesses ARE the town/city. Businesses have employees. Employees must get to work. Employees do not like living in Victorian slums next door to the factory. Public transport is infrequent, overpriced, unreliable.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if people can't easily get to work, they'll leave. If the business can't fill it's vacancies it cannot perform, then they leave. The LA then pats themselves on the back for driving out traffic then wonder 5 years later why the town has died a death and no businesses will go near it.

These attempts to control have been exhibited since the start of history to have failed. Humans are animals. Ultimately they'll do what's best for them and their families. For most working (thus econonomically contributing) people in the UK public transport is not a system which offers quality of life or value for money.

If LA's want to reduce congestion why not suspend driving licenses for the unemployed or ban school runs for anyone living within 3 miles (walking distance) of their school?

It seems a bit retarded that it's always the working population that seem to come of worst in all these stupid schemes. It's only the employed that NEED to go anywhere for any given time so it's only the employed who cannot avoid these extra charges.

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there seems to be a disjoint in local government - new builds can have these 0.5 spaces per dwelling, but when the previous owners of our house extended from 3 bedrooms to 5 bedrooms they were forced to cut a chunk out of the garden to provide 2 off street parking places (as well as the garage).

Of course the disjoint is actually worse, as they were forced to create another parking space (great news for me, so we can park both cars off the road) but not made to widen the pavement drop. We thus have one parking space with a 4" drop to drive up / fall down, the other is dropped.

I wrote to the council to ask that they widen the pavement drop, they wrote back to tell me that it was an offence to cross a pavement with a motor vehicle (sounds like a bad joke - "what do you get if you cross a pavement with a car? A Fine") if adequate drops were not provided. So the council gets £135 off me to widen the drop! I guess the previous owners didn't mind the 4" drop so much.

I wonder if the 0.5 spaces per dwelling has some realistic / sensible background, in the example of the 5 bedroom house I think 0.5 spaces per bedroom is reasonable. If there were 5 one bedroom flats however, the ratio doesn't stack up any more.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Ha! I didn't know that! I remember seeing the signs saying it was Saturdays only. (very useful)
There is now the new supermarket with a large car park and a *free* bus service to the town centre, which is probably cheaper and easier than the creekmoor one anyway.


Good! The locals here are the ones who wanted it in the first place! >70% of them said yes to it.
The one in our road has a 2 hour free-for-all which means that it'll still be congested at school kicking out time. (when the parents used to park over people's driveways and now can do it without fear of prosecution because the marked bays go over everyone's driveways) I have been told that the scheme was to stop commuters from parking. So they don't want people to work in Poole town centre.

We also got more double yellow lines than are needed. Unfortunatly they painted them correctly.

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Andrew.

Hmm, whilst I see where you're coming from, you've over-simplified the argument a tad. In my last job I drove to work maybe 4 times, and only then because I was dropping the car off at the garage over the road from where I worked... In my current job I've not driven to work at all (though this will be changing once we move house-at the mo I walk or take the bus and my wife drives to work, after we move that'll be the other way around).

Compare that to most of last year after I'd been made redundant - I was driving all over the South East going to interviews. If your "no licence for the unemployed" idea had been reality, how would I have got to those interviews? Would my wife have had to take the car to the garage for servicing and MOT on her precious days off, instead of me being able to do it at any time of the week? Would my wife have had to do all the driving if we went anywhere together? What if there hadn't been reliable (or indeed any) public transport to the nearest jobcentre? What if I were single?

What about housewives/husbands, retirees, and other people who aren't working, but who may well have a need to be somewhere at a certain time and would find their journey significantly lengthened, more expensive or simply not possible if they were prevented from using their car?

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Chris

Surely it's illegal to park anywhere with a sign that says 'No parking on footpath at any time' with a no parking circle thing...

I encountered an artic cab parked at the side of a chicane, on a bend... Dodgy, especially considering I didn't have right of way on the chicane...

Every morning I encounter a minicab parked on a double yellow line outside someone's house... Trying to get round him can be fun...

I've also managed to get caught behind a bin lorry on this same road... I don't understand why they insist on emptying bins during rush hour... If they stopped for maybe an hour and a half to let the traffic clear they could do it much more easily, not annoy as many drivers, and keep themselves a bit safer with regard to walking out infront of overtaking cars...

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Mike

I'm pretty sure that is a law/laws which say you must not block the highway or an access. Surely these are enough to stop people parking anywhere where it would inconvenience people?

There are a few roads near where I live which are very narrow but have double yellow lines down both sides. In my opinion that is a waste of taxpayers money as it is already illegal to park there (as parking even a smart car would block the road)

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Andrew.

They have to do this so they can finish early to get to their second jobs on time.

Nothing to do with parking but near me is the Ford Transit van factory. I leave for work at about 7am at the start of the busy period. So why do Fords drive lots of vehicles (to where I know not) in convoy with trade plates on at this time of day and add to the congestion?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

You mean like the ones proposed for the London Olympics?

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Less Kodak, more Kojak.
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

You're right I'm sure. However, when it comes to finding somewhere to park their car I'll wager that many peoples perception of 'inconvenience' alters in their own favour.

Same sort of idea sprung up in this part of Warks( no vote memtioned though) - in one area council wanted residents to pay for residents parking permits in own street, even though there were not enouigh spaces for all the cars owned by residents.
A quick word in the ear of the local councillors /county councillors to remind them that this was election year seemed to bring order-- have seen no more in local paper.

On the subject of parking in own drive - to get own drive you need access accross the pavement (dropped kerb) --in this area commercial and trade vehicles are prohibited from using these

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on