The excess of cars is destroying the gardens in my street

[andrewducker]

More and more people are parking in the local streets near us, leading to an overflow where people are now parking in our street.

I initially thought this was because the council had brought in new parking zones, where people needed a residents permit to park, and so commuters were being forced in to our street, but it turns out that those plans are on hold.

In any case, the influx has now led to two houses in the street, in the last month, to dig up their front garden and turn it into a parking space, so that they have somewhere to park their car. Which makes me sad.

I'm not sure I have a good answer to this, other than extending the controlled parking zone to cover our street, so that residents do have space to park their cars in the street.

Comments

[rmc28]

We saw similar in Cambridge, with a couple of streets having residential parking, and pushing the problem outward. My local residents association considered it and even had a provisional survey: entirely unsurprisingly the further people lived from the main road we connect to, the less "need" they saw for residential parking permits (because fewer people tried to park in front of their house).

A few years ago the council just installed a large residents parking area over a whole load of streets - some with it already in place, but all the nearby and contiguous streets too. It included marking specific parking spaces on most roads, and thus also made clear where people can't park. There's always a certain amount of ignoring of the double-yellows for short stays, but overall I think it's an improvement. Although as we don't have a car and do have an offroad parking space for visitors, we're not affected by any of the downsides, but we get the benefit of living somewhere slightly less hostile to walk and cycle.

[mellowtigger]

Something similar happens in Minnesota. Here in Minneapolis, people are still allowed to park on streets (even in winter) so they do. In neighboring Columbia Heights, however, it's illegal. So what did everyone there do? They paved over their back yards so they had a place to park. *sigh* So much lost vegetation, private space, and permeable surface. Such a waste.

[fub]

Most residential areas were designed for a much lower car ownership rate than is currently usual. We are lucky in that some of our neighbours don't have cars so we rarely run out of parking space on our street, but when someone is having a birthday party we immediately notice.
Luckily we live so far away from anywhere people want/need to be that we don't have a problem of people parking in our street and then going somewhere else.

[channelpenguin]

In the 8 years since I moved to (East) Berlin, it's gone from possible to park in the (side) streets near my apartment to very very unlikely unless maybe in the middle of the day. The main roads are clear zones except at night so you can't park. I got a car last year and rent a parking space in my courtyard (there are 3!) from the tenant upstairs who has no car. There's awesome public transport though, so not many people have cars. Still too many for the area. We had one big carpark but they built hipster apartments over half of it a few years ago.

[anef]

I voted against residential parking in our area when they proposed it, on the grounds that it would push the problem further out. But they have introduced it and it is lovely to be able to park in our street. What we need is a functioning public transport system so that people can use that instead of driving, but my impression is that Edinburgh has one of those already!

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I think that once you reach a certain point you're going to end up with a domino effect of pushing people out, and the urgent provision of park/ride facilities to allow it to be pushed a significant distance.

And yes, Edinburgh's is pretty good - although I'd like there to be more orbital paths, rather than it being quite so hub/spoke focussed.