3 ms·

A lot of traffic is derived from people just looking for somewhere to park. In parts of London people will drive around a dozen streets just looking for that el

A lot of traffic is derived from people just looking for somewhere to park. In parts of London people will drive around a dozen streets just looking for that elusive parking space hoping they will catch someone just leaving. This driving is seriously anti-social. Yet planners see this as traffic to accomodate. We also have one way systems to steer this flow of 'traffic' around so that it 'flows'. This means that even more traffic is generated. People just drive round and round. The distance seems absurd if you cycle and obey the signs yet motorists just go with it. It might be much better if we thought again about that and allowed for natural congestion. I could build a spare room in the street, it would not take long though for the council to tear down that extra bedroom, studio or whatever it was that I built. Yet I could buy a £200 car, pay a similar sum in tax and park right outside my door to leave the £200 heap there in perpetuity just so long as I paid the tax, which is a fraction of a month's rent for a room. Why do we have it so motorists have a god given right to park on the streets? We need to think whether we need our streets walled in by tin boxes. Fixing this is easy, we make it so that you cannot park within a distance of a junction, whether that be a junction on to a big road or a side street. Then we increase that distance year by year. In so doing we remove the tin boxes and those looking for that elusive parking space. We could then get back to natural streets where you can drive/ride/walk safely.

twic 12y ago
Reminds me of a situation in Brighton, where the council is forcing people to move bike sheds from their own front gardens, while allowing cars to continue to be parked willy-nilly. As a journalist writes [1]: I suppose it depends on how you view a street scene. A small shed is, for me, considerably less intrusive than a parked car. And yet the residential streets of Withdean are full of cars. But that’s seen as normal. Bike stores are not. More anomalous still is the fact that if you have a sufficiently big front garden and don’t live in a conservation area you can, in most circumstances, turn that garden into a driveway to leave your car, without the need for without planning permission. There are conditions on using water-permeable materials to avoid cumulative flood risks, but it’s fairly straightforward. I don’t know about you, but when if comes to local impact I’d say a driveway containing a Humvee (or even something smaller) might be slightly more significant than a discreet bike shed. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/aug/01/brighton-green-council-crackdown-cycle-stores-barriers-cycling http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/aug/01...

twic 12y ago

Reminds me of a situation in Brighton, where the council is forcing people to move bike sheds from their own front gardens, while allowing cars to continue to be parked willy-nilly. As a journalist writes [1]: I suppose it depends on how you view a street scene. A small shed is, for me, considerably less intrusive than a parked car. And yet the residential streets of Withdean are full of cars. But that’s seen as normal. Bike stores are not. More anomalous still is the fact that if you have a sufficiently big front garden and don’t live in a conservation area you can, in most circumstances, turn that garden into a driveway to leave your car, without the need for without planning permission. There are conditions on using water-permeable materials to avoid cumulative flood risks, but it’s fairly straightforward. I don’t know about you, but when if comes to local impact I’d say a driveway containing a Humvee (or even something smaller) might be slightly more significant than a discreet bike shed. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/aug/01/brighton-green-council-crackdown-cycle-stores-barriers-cycling http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/aug/01...