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Our local school tries to stop this by putting no-parking signs out for the duration of drop off and pick up.  Which a) it shouldnt be their problem to solve, but they get it in the neck from the residents.  b) just moved the problem further down the street and changed it to half on/half off the pavement.

Every so often the council sends a warden on a moped around.  Not sure that solves anything.

Im on the fence about it.  The school run is transitory and the same people moaning about the school drop off dont moan about the residents of the houses on the street with no drives/parking spaces who do the same thing who are there permanently.....   Double yellows all the way down would be my approach.

Passing the school near me yesterday afternoon at kicking out time there were parents parked nose to tail around two corners, half on half off the pavement, there were people parked on the zig zags of the zebra crossing and even in the bus stop. It was a glorious day and yet none of the parents thought their little darlings could walk a few meters extra. Probably because all the bad parking makes it too dangerous.

Where I used to live they had a camera car that would drive past and book anyone parking illegally.

Antisocial driving, parking and idling is rife even at leafy Garstang's Community Academy. Even when it's unbearably hot the dreadful mothers (the stereotype is true! large SUVs, engines idling, roads blocked, buses can't get through- school buses that is, large tailbacks) have to park as close as possible to the school so the idle little *******s don't have to walk a terrifyingly arduous few hundred yards. The people most affected are the respectable students walking a considerable distance in both directions to their homes through the clouds of carbon monoxide, NOx, VOCs etc. It is reprehensible that the school and the police do nothing about this.

There was a school Iocally, where one set of parents had grouped together to discourage other parents from using cars on the school run. The police actually had to advise them to stop their campaign, because they wouldnt be able to protect them.

That's assuming double yellow lines have any meaning in your neck of the woods - they have very little here in my South Lakes town. Riding out of town on the northerly road out on my way to work yesterday, I must have passed at least 7-8 parked on Double Yellows in the space of about 150 metres. That's not a one-off either, it's the same every morning. There's also a small gym at the end of our road - double yellows all around, and you can be guaranteed that come the afternoon they will be mostly obscured by the gym patrons. The irony of course being that if they had walked or cycled (or run!) then they would be even fitter!

Round here there is a college where the road and dedicated drop off zone have all been remodelled and resurfaced, gleaming double yellows all along the road other than the designated drop zone (a long lay-by).

So the double-yellows are universally interpreted to mean do not park within the boundary of opposing pairs of yellows, remain outside by getting your wheels gutter-side of the lines with the rest of the vehicle on the pavement.

I've been doing some Cycle Safari on my "commute to / from work" (WFH) recently and one thing that really stands out is the parking:

a) Having to constantly move out out round parked vehicles in cycle lanes, bus lanes, half on the pavement etc.  Many are actually "legit" because of limited hours of operation / inconsistent and silly rules about bike lanes.

b) The number of houses with actual drives and garages - sometimes for several vehicles - which have cars outside parked on the road.

This is ignoring dooring / people suddenly pulling away without looking for bikes.  Almost makes the cycle infrastructure pointless.

A typho.

pockstone wrote:

A typho.

You only get an o, with Typho....

pockstone wrote:

A typho.

typhoid Jermey?

*Root cause*

The trouble with banning pavement parking is that it has become so normalised, that a ban will lead to a crisis in parking space available compared to cars in existence.

It really should have been done years ago. Although it was managed in London where presumably the issue had been sufficiently bad to warrant action, so maybe there is hope.

"But where will my partner and I park our cars?"

"You moved into a flat with no parking spaces assigned - where had you intended to park your cars?"

or

"But my car is in my parking space - where will I park the works van?"

"At work?"

Ah but it's the loss aversion / sensitivity to change. "When we moved in we could park there.  You've taken it away!  We'd never have moved there if there wasn't parking!"

brooksby wrote:

"But where will my partner and I park our (3) cars?"

.....

TFTFY

An absolute bugbear of mine; people parking their works vans outside their homes. It belongs at the work's depot, not in the road.

Round the corner are 2 horse boxes, wankpanzer and large works van. One will always be on the pavement despite the road only being wide enough for 2 cars. All they are doing is damaging the kerb/pavement.

Where I live, it's written in to the deeds that no marked commercial vehicles are allowed to be parked in the residential areas.
Doesn't stop the 8 swb Transit (or similar), the 2 Luton type vans, and the 3 LWB high tops that park with their arses over the pavement and totally blocking the footpath.

Many of the families have older kids, so instead of the 1 car per house plus a couple of visitors, there's now 4 or 5. One 5 bed house has 6 private cars, 2 company cars, 1 car derived van, and two transit sized vans. ... All fighting for the same limited number of spaces.
There's also a caravan, and a boat on a trailer, taking up two parking spaces.

Velophaart_95 wrote:

An absolute bugbear of mine; people parking their works vans outside their homes. It belongs at the work's depot, not in the road.

wycombewheeler wrote:

*Root cause* The trouble with banning pavement parking is that it has become so normalised, that a ban will lead to a crisis in parking space available compared to cars in existence. It really should have been done years ago. Although it was managed in London where presumably the issue had been sufficiently bad to warrant action, so maybe there is hope.

Conversely, if society ends up with less car ownership due to successful active travel initiatives (yeah, right) then the pavement parking issues will largely go away. As it stands, the right-to-park has become so ingrained that people don't even consider it as a personal issue (i.e. where to store my personal property) and frame it as a wider problem for society/council/government. It most likely doesn't even occur to most parkers that using the pavement can be a big problem for wheelchair users, pushchairs or even blind peds.

wycombewheeler wrote:

*Root cause* The trouble with banning pavement parking is that it has become so normalised, that a ban will lead to a crisis in parking space available compared to cars in existence.

Will it though? The vast majority of the pavement parking I see is entirely avoidable. It's done for convenience (people can't be bothered to walk an extra 100m from where they could park not-on-the-pavement) or because people would rather park on the pavement than risk inconveniencing drivers (or, more accurately, risk having their car clipped by drivers trying to squeeze past when there isn't space).

OnYerBike wrote:

wycombewheeler wrote:

*Root cause* The trouble with banning pavement parking is that it has become so normalised, that a ban will lead to a crisis in parking space available compared to cars in existence.

Will it though? The vast majority of the pavement parking I see is entirely avoidable. It's done for convenience (people can't be bothered to walk an extra 100m from where they could park not-on-the-pavement) or because people would rather park on the pavement than risk inconveniencing drivers (or, more accurately, risk having their car clipped by drivers trying to squeeze past when there isn't space).

My road is about 2.5 cars wide, so there is parking all down one side, and then bizarrely there is a single yellow line on the opposite side, implying parking there in the evenings is OK, when clearly there is not width to park on both sides simultaeneously. Therefore, pavement parking is de facto encouraged by the local authoity painting the lines in such a way. (should be double yellow)

Most houses have drives full of cars and all space on the none lines side of the road that is not driveway opening is full of cars, such that most evenings there will be 4 or 5 cars parked half on the pavement on the opposite side. Not a case of parking 100m away, more like half a mile.

Root causes are several 

1) property prices too high for audlts to move out, so households are no longer two adults with children but parents with adult offspring therefore many cars.

2) first road without residents parking restrictions so people from neighbouring roads store cars on our road (line of 3 cars which have not moved in months, potentially someone trading cars as a business, although I don't see how profits can be made by storing cars for long periods without selling them)

3) tacit implication by line painting that parking on the pavement is acceptable

4) use of residential road for parking when visiting the town centre

Essentially people arriving home o an evening will often find nowhere to park, other than th pavement, which is currently encouraged

wycombewheeler wrote:

*Root cause* The trouble with banning pavement parking is that it has become so normalised, that a ban will lead to a crisis in parking space available compared to cars in existence.

There is of course an obvious compromise. Turn most residential streets into shared spaces. the compromise is that the speed limit would have to be reduced to say 15mph and occasionally a driver might be held up by a pedestrian that walking in "road". 

"Cycle streets", please!  "Shared space" seems to be used for designating "change things without really addressing the issue of motor traffic" or "mix incompatible modes of transport".

I definitely meant Shared Space. https://cyclingsolutions.info/shared-space/

Many residential roads are already cul-de-sacs and many that aren't, that might be being used as rat runs, need to become LTNs to reduce volume of traffic. Actually this article suggests a 10mph speed limit so I did get that wrong.

They allow for cars parked directly outside peoples houses and going forward it would mean that you don't have to run your charger over the pavement.

Thanks for the link. Very much agree with the LTN aspect / reduce volume and speed of traffic. I said "cycle streets" but of course in some cases there also should not even be cycle through-traffic.  I think "shared space" really only works if there are barely any cars and they're not going "through" the place.  Not the place to debate it here but I'm anti basically for the same kind of reasons noted e.g. here and here.

I note the linked article - although "pro" the idea - does qualify things e.g. very low speed, limits on motor traffic volume, parking etc. and:

"Blind or seriously visually impaired persons have difficulty getting around in shared space areas, primarily because it feels insecure sharing an area with motor traffic. Guide rails may be installed to resolve the issue."

IanMK wrote:

...cars parked directly outside peoples houses and going forward it would mean that you don't have to run your charger over the pavement.

One of the key differences between here and the Netherlands (where cycling is a mass activity) is that parking is presumed only where specifically permitted where in the UK it's the opposite, parking is allowed by default and then we mark the exceptions. (I haven't links to hand on the legal on this). My street is signed as a "home zone" - nice but as far as I'm aware the sign is almost "decorative".  Even though it has parking bays it still has to be plastered with double yellows / no loading marks etc. everywhere. Those are of course treated as "advisory" although that's more about enforcement.

There's an in-depth article here about designing for nicer streets.

IanMK wrote:

Society need to change it's perception of poor parking, so that it's percieved as what it is; anti-social behaviour. The trouble is that it's sort of convenient for the majority and only really inconvenient for a minority. My biggest issue though is that it can lead, in albeit relatively rare instances, to other road traffic incidents. Even when this happens nobody is interested in tackling the route cause because they would rather see it as a one off incident and if somebody does point out the problem then the motoring lobby kicks in to overdrive. Perhaps there's some analogy with gun control in the USA?

Absolutely agreed.

Interesting that this issue manifests itself most in urban areas, where typically proportionally fewer people own cars, almost as many households don't own cars as do - in London in 2012 54% had access at least one car (TFL)

Also a quick buzz of the internet tells me that only 25% of UK cars are parked on street, although this is likely to be higher in urban areas. (RAC)

It might be easier than first appears (although not denying that the task would be tall) to get that idea across.

Agreed - socially acceptable - indeed "invisible" until you can't park, or someone has parked where it's inconvenient to you.  Problem is just the space occupied vs. amount of use.  In 2012 the RAC themselves calculated that cars spend 96% of their time parked. Now we're more often working from home (so don't commute as much and don't need space at home and work) there's maybe an opportunity to re-examine this?