Residents of a street in a Leicestershire town are opposing council plans to introduce a shared use footway and cycleway – because they are worried it would prevent them from parking on the pavement.
The Leicester Mercury says that more than 100 residents of Netherley Road in Hinckley have signed a petition to oppose the facility, and that they were due to meet with council officials last Friday to discuss the situation.
The petition was organised by Ann Pendlebury, who said: “People have parked this way for a long time and, with my partner, Dale, working in Cadeby and me commuting 25 miles, we need a car each and don't have a drive.
"If they put the cycle lane in, we'll be competing for a smaller number of spaces.
"It's an old-fashioned road where the elderly are looked after and everyone talks or at least nods to each other.
"This will result in the breakdown of this community.
"I also think it would lead to people getting rid of their front gardens to create drives.
"That's going to increase the likelihood of flooding, which is already an issue for some."
The picture accompanying the Leicester Mercury’s article shows cars parked on driveways outside a number of houses on the street, but none on the pavement. Google Street View shows a few cars on the footway, but most parked up on forecourts outside houses.
Rule 244 of the Highway Code says:
You MUST NOT park partially or wholly on the pavement in London, and should not do so elsewhere unless signs permit it. Parking on the pavement can obstruct and seriously inconvenience pedestrians, people in wheelchairs or with visual impairments and people with prams or pushchairs.
Plans on Leicestershire County Council’s website show that pavement parking is part of the proposal for Netherley Road.
The council says that among other things, the project will result in:
creating shared use footways/ cycleways on existing footways, where necessary widening footways within the highway boundary
introducing partial footway parking on Netherley Road to identify areas where parking can take place to prevent obstruction from parked vehicles.
This plan highlights the position of the proposed parking bays, and there will be signs at either end of the road that read: “Vehicles may be marked partially on the verge and footway in marked bays” and “End of area where vehicles may be parked partially on the verge or footway.”
Peter Osborne, Leicestershire County Council’s spokesman for transport, told the Leicester Mercury: "We welcome comments from the residents of Netherley Road as we are really keen to hear all views on the proposed traffic improvement scheme for Hinckley.
"We recognise changes can be made to improve congestion and traffic-flow in Hinckley and make access easier for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike.
"This should, in turn, help boost the town centre, encourage further investment and make it easier for people to cycle, walk and use public transport."
Consultation on the plans closes on Thursday 27 March.
49 thoughts on “Not in my FRONT yard: Hinckley residents oppose cycle path… because it may stop them parking on the pavement”
The residents’ objections
The residents’ objections quoted in the article sound a bit off, but council’s plan looks rubbish. Footways shared with cyclists are the worst form of cycling provision. As far as I can tell, apart from moving some lampposts and street furniture, they’re only going to apply some paint to mark parking bays, and add some shared use signs. They’re not creating a cycle lane. Broken Britain!
Looks more like an A road
Looks more like an A road than a residential road… Council plans are sh**e, they should narrow the road and put some greenery in, some benches, etc…
jacknorell wrote:Looks more
Completely agree in theory – the road look much too wide – but I use a route almost daily where this has been done quite badly, and it’s really rather annoying. The greenery (grass) has been placed in the middle of the road. Busses and trucks have to stay behind cyclists (safe, but it’s not much fun cycling uphill with a bus huffing and puffing right behind you) and cars can only get past if the driver is extremely rude (very rare) or if the cyclist pulls in to the kerb and stops to let them squeeze by (so the uphill cyclist loses momentum). It’s not terrible, it’s probably much nicer than what this road looks like at the moment, but it’s not great either and it tempts drivers into squeezing past just before the stretch of road that is traffic calmed with green grassy islands in the middle. I thought my local bus drivers were great because they don’t do this to me, but then I was a passenger on the local bus service one day and saw an elderly cyclist being overtaken much too closely and realized that the only reason the bus drivers don’t mess with me is that I just don’t give them enough room to do anything really stupid.
To be fair, I’d still use the
To be fair, I’d still use the road anyway in this scenario. Pedestrians really aren’t used to anything faster moving being on same path as them, and that’s just the ones without earphones in.
As somebody whose life is
As somebody whose life is happily car-free I can’t profess to understand the residents, but I would probably be very happy to sign their petition if I was a local. I’d rather cycle on-road than off-road in residential areas (provided, of course, that the roads in residential areas are civilized places to cycle, with appropriate traffic calming and low speed limits that are (almost) universally adhered to. If the residents want cyclists to use the road rather than segregated provision, they need to accept the need to make the road attractive to all cyclists. In a sense there should be a natural alliance between campaigning residents and campaigning cyclists, since cyclists need civilized places to cycle and residents (even those who are not cyclists and whose children don’t cycle) need civilized places to live. If this alliance isn’t working, something has gone wrong somewhere (entrenched/unfounded anti-cyclist prejudice?) and at least one of the two groups needs to rethink its PR strategy.
“I also think it would lead
“I also think it would lead to people getting rid of their front gardens to create drives.
Judging by Streetview, it’s a bit late raising that as an objection..
Every scheme that antagonises
Every scheme that antagonises local residents launches a thousand punishment passes. The photos have been taken during the day when most people are at work, so give a false impression of parking need. We’ve all got to understand that many young adults share houses with parents, or share houses with their peers, so the parking space required per house is increasing all the time, so we shouldn’t dismiss these residents’ concerns.
Far better would be to change the speed limit to 20mph and just place bollards half way down the street to create a “quietway”. Link a few quietways together and you suddenly have a network.
Neil753 wrote:…We’ve all
There’s something very wrong with that trend, not that you’re wrong.
Fully agree with putting bollards in the middle to stop through-traffic.
jacknorell wrote:Neil753
it’s on a bus route, so they need to be automatic bollards
Paul_C wrote:it’s on a bus
Well, those are in common use, so that’s a non-issue.
Or, you know, the bus could be re-routed to the nearest larger road?
Paul_C wrote:jacknorell
it’s on a bus route, so they need to be automatic bollards— Neil753
No house, in that whole block of residential streets, is any more than 400 yards from the nearest main road. Much easier to just change the bus route.
Neil753 wrote:Paul_C
it’s on a bus route, so they need to be automatic bollards— jacknorell
No house, in that whole block of residential streets, is any more than 400 yards from the nearest main road. Much easier to just change the bus route.— Neil753
Can’t be having that. Just think of the destruction it will have on the community in having to walk 400 yards for a bus. After all, the bus route has been there from the dawn of time. I bet you that nobody uses it though, going by the number of cars parked up on the now defunct gardens.
Neil753 wrote:Every scheme
Oh bollocks to this. On-street parking is just another way that non-drivers subsidise people with cars.
Bikebikebike wrote:Neil753
While I agree in theory with this, I think its a lost cause as those who feel entitled to such a subisidy are far too powerful politically to take on. People with cars now think they have a human right to park right outside their homes (I wish they’d show a bit more gratitude to those of us who make more space by _not_ having a car…logically we ought to be able to charge a fee for the use of the space we thus free up!)
But I also think Neil753 is right that it would be far better in any case to just make the road itself safer for cycling, via strict speed limits and (best of all) partially bollarding it off to stop through traffic.
Neil753 wrote:…the parking
But that’s the problem, this isn’t sustainable. The requirement eats into the safe public space which would have previously been available for walking and playing. And still people behave as if the world owes them as much parking space as they feel they need.
Many of us know that residences in town often don’t come with bike storage nowadays, but we don’t automatically feel we have a right to berate the council about it. What if I wanted to build a (van-sized) secure bike store on the public pavement outside my house? Is that OK?
Can I demand the council subsidises my “requirement” for a private jet and provides me with somewhere to land it and store it?
pmanc wrote:Neil753
This may well be true. I can think of one road where all the houses have driveways, _and_ there are parking bays painted on the pavement, and _still_ additional cars get parked on the remaining part of the pavement or doubled-up sticking out of the driveways. Its as if the number of cars each household owns increases to completely fill whatever parking space is available.
But how can the trend be reversed?
It does make me wonder about the constant cliche of ‘the hard pressed motorist’. If they are so hard pressed why do they keep getting more-and-more cars?
FluffyKittenofTindalos
But how can the trend be reversed?— Neil753
Tax the fuck out of private cars and invest the money in public transport. Obviously, on an individual level people are too thick to figure it out for themselves, already feel oppressed by the government and “ecologists”, so you don’t lose any popularity points for implementing what they already believe to be the case. They won’t thank anyone for it, but they whinge about everything anyway.
Ush
But how can the trend be reversed?— pmanc
Tax the fuck out of private cars and invest the money in public transport. Obviously, on an individual level people are too thick to figure it out for themselves, already feel oppressed by the government and “ecologists”, so you don’t lose any popularity points for implementing what they already believe to be the case. They won’t thank anyone for it, but they whinge about everything anyway.— Neil753
I’d vote for that but its a question of political will. Somehow the power of the petrolhead-lobby has to be chipped away at. As long as so many people don’t see any choice but to drive they will not support anything that seems to make driving harder.
Neil753 wrote: so the parking
It would be interesting to know if that’s actually true at a national level. I’m pretty certain London has actually seen that trend reverse slightly. Private car ownership appears to be in decline amongst the young here because it’s simply so expensive once you factor in insurance costs.
Most new housing in London is usually required to have fewer parking spaces than residents. My own borough seems to be fixated with installing as many sheffield stands for bikes as it possibly can, even though you would be insane to use them after dark. Anytime I see a bike left at one overnight, it’s stripped of parts by the morning.
bikebot wrote:Neil753 wrote:
Now I come to think of it, I have seen the figures out there somewhere on the web – I recall they show car-ownership has increased hugely in most of the country, with a particularly marked increase in multi-car households (I think if anything its even more about people with cars getting more of them than about non-car owners getting cars). But inner London is the massive exception, as there car ownership has significantly declined.
FluffyKittenofTindalos
That does make sense, I’ll have to look into this sometime. Of course most of us are part of the problem as well when it comes to parking. Car ownership is just as higher or even higher amongst cyclists. I may not take part in the insane pastime of clogging up the centre of London with my car, but I still need to park the thing somewhere when I’m not using it (I have a private off road space, but just making a point).
bikebot
And having a private off-road space should become the norm. Nothing else I might purchase would I expect to do so without somewhere to store it.
The only positive for it being cyclists who own a car is that they might be less inclined to insist it is outside the front door if they don’t use it everyday.
On shared houses, I don’t think that does automatically lead to multiple car household. Every shared house I’ve lived in has been car-free. Young people are less likely to own cars, as are those on lower incomes, and both are reasons to share housing.
HKCambridge wrote:On shared
London appears to be setting a trend which we’ll hopefully see increase and spread to more cities. I know a few people who gave up their private car and just use a car club when they need one, something I may consider myself in a few years when the current set of (four) wheels is retired.
It’s interesting to see how attitudes are shifting amongst young people. Twenty years ago a lot of people getting their first job got a scooter as a cheap way to get about. Now I hardly ever see them unless they’ve got a pizza box on the back, whilst the hipsters riding fixies are everywhere.
FluffyKittenofTindalos
That does make sense, I’ll have to look into this sometime. Of course most of us are part of the problem as well when it comes to parking. Car ownership is just as higher or even higher amongst cyclists. I may not take part in the insane pastime of clogging up the centre of London with my car, but I still need to park the thing somewhere when I’m not using it (I have a private off road space, but just making a point).
Now I come to think of it, I
Now I come to think of it, I have seen the figures out there somewhere on the web – I recall they show car-ownership has increased hugely in most of the country, with a particularly marked increase in multi-car households
While Glasgow where I live still has surprisingly low levels of car ownership, yes, it’s gone up remarkably. From 33% of households in 1991 to 55% now. Multi-car houses are around 15%. The worry for the planners is if this growth continues (multi car or not) to match southern England, we’d have 50,000+ more cars on the roads, where would they all go? That’s 125 football pitches of parking space right there.
Neil753 wrote:We’ve all got
Five adults, all working, round ours.
Only two cars between us. Only one of which is ever parked adjacent to our home. If I had my way the number of cars would be reduced to one, max.
Not only should we dismiss their concerns we should be challenging the assumption that to go without a car, and a place to park it, involves resigning one’s position in the human race.
Yep, looks fine to cycle on
Yep, looks fine to cycle on the road as it is from the photo. I’d rather that than the confusion of cycling amongst parked cars and pedestrians.
I did enjoy this great non-sequitur, though:
“It’s an old-fashioned road where the elderly are looked after and everyone talks or at least nods to each other.
“This will result in the breakdown of this community.”
????
So what the council is
So what the council is proposing is shared use that still has some parking places? Fun, door zone and pedestrians. And I love a shared path that has an access ramp for parking every other house, those regular dips and bumps help keep me alert!
I think I see a “cycling facility of the month” in the making. As suggested by others, look at creating a quietway. If I were ever there, I’d ride on the road anyway and the residents might even appreciate a slightly more family friendly neighbourhood.
And in general, I’d rather local authorities spent the little they have on improving dangerous junctions instead of relatively safe straight roads.
More NIMBY’S it
More NIMBY’S it seems.
HOORAY, LET’S GAS EVERYONE ON PETROL FUMES?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
“I also think it would lead
“I also think it would lead to people getting rid of their front gardens to create drives.”
Well we can’t have people parking their cars on their own property can we…
Saratoga wrote:”I also think
I believe the problem with that is, when everyone does it, it greatly increases water run-off and so increases problems with the drains being overwhelmed, hence increasing flooding risk. Or so I have read.
FluffyKittenofTindalos
Surely this is a solvable problem? You don’t have to pave the whole garden, just two strips for the wheels. Rest can be grass, trees and bushes at the edges to soak up water.
HKCambridge
Surely this is a solvable problem? You don’t have to pave the whole garden, just two strips for the wheels. Rest can be grass, trees and bushes at the edges to soak up water.— Saratoga
Yeah, not sure what the planning laws say about this, but does seem as if it wouldn’t be rocket-science for them to say you can convert your front garden as long as you leave X % of surface uncovered. Just from what I see around here though that’s not how people currently do it. Also there’s the issue of having to drive over the footway to get in and out.
There are permeable products
There are permeable products that can be used to surface drives so run off is reduced to the minimum.
Why would anyone need to pave
Why would anyone need to pave over a whole front garden?
As mentioned above, only two strips needed of supportive material, and it can be permeable lattice blocks, which let the grass grow through. Like these (many other variants are available):
http://greenspec.buildinggreen.com/product/turfstone-paving-stones/ri-lampus-co/2118
Was in Duesseldorf a number of years ago, the massive parking lot outside of the convention centre used these.
The average mileage per car
The average mileage per car is falling, but the average number of cars per household is increasing, because the number of homes being built is failing to keep pace with population. If you add multiple occupancy to the trend for developers to build without parking provision if they can get away with it, plus councils’ efforts to restrict parking places for new commercial developments, you can see why this problem isn’t going to go away.
The crying shame is that we could create safe networks virtually overnight, not just in town but nationally too, with the use of bollards and some 20mph signs, on residential streets and carefully chosen minor roads linking communities.
If we want real change, within the cost restrictions that every local authoritiy inevitably faces, then we have to stop campaigning for a few cycleways like the one proposed in one street in Hinkley, that ultimately provide very little social cohesion, through a collective failure to look at the bigger picture. If we can do this, then there would be plenty of room for parked cars, on routes that are safe for cycling.
Quote:It’s an old-fashioned
Except for anyone who uses a pushchair, or a wheelchair, presumably… 8|
I don’t really understand this – whatever other arguments are used, the locals have admitted to mass law breaking. Why doesn’t the council just send down a traffic warden? I bet the fees for illegal parking would pay for any changes the council is proposing to make along there..
brooksby wrote:Quote:It’s an
Are they law-breaking? I thought parking on the pavement was only illegal in London and (I think) Bath? Anyone know for sure?
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Its not illegal to park on the pavement, but it is illegal to drive on the pavement.
If you know a way of getting your car up on there without driving it, then you’re OK…
(I suppose it would be legal if you parked up on the road, and got a friend to push you).
brooksby
I guess outside of London (and whatever the one other city was) where its illegal even to be parked on the pavement, the legal system assumes that any car parked on the footway must have been either pushed or picked up and carried there (or maybe dissasembled and reconstructed piece-by-peice in situ). Clearly this in no way makes the legal system look foolish, no sir.
I sort of hope that the
I sort of hope that the residents suceed with thier petition. ‘Shared Use’ paths (otherwise known as ‘cyclists may use the pavement’) are really bad news. They provide a false sense of security for novice cyclists, are usually unsuitable for more experienced cyclists and reinforce the view held by a sizable minority of drivers that cycles don’t have a place on the highway.
As for car parking, every residential building should have a defined limit to the number of vehicles that are allowed to be registered there. Residents could apply to have this limit increased if they make more space by giving up their garden’s to build driveways etc. and although it would be open to a certain level of abuse it could make a big difference to the number of cars parked on residential roads.
Neil753 makes good points about the general increase in driver-aged individials per household but as a nation we need to separate ourselves from this idea that car ownership is somehow compulsary. Imagine a married couple living in a average 3 bed semi with their two grown-up kids, both of which have partners who have also moved in. If they have a car each that’s 6 cars. Given the lack of parking provision its simply not sustainable.
The conversion of pavement to
The conversion of pavement to shared use path is the reallocation of roadspace from the most vulnerable users (pedestrians) to the least vulnerable (motor vehicles), where the exact opposite should be happening to create environments safe and relaxing for people.
Paving over front gardens has
Paving over front gardens has very specific guidance but is universally flouted and no Local Authority is likely to enforce it.
http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permission/commonprojects/pavingfrontgarden/
Anyone who knocks a front wall down and paves over a garden is worse than Hitler.
In my opinion.
Along with plastic windows is the biggest blight on the urban landscape.
The road in the story looks like a feckin horrible place to live exactly for this reason and the idiots who live there deserve to live on such a horrible car dominated road.
Good I hate bike paths, there
Good I hate bike paths, there designed by the same half wits that bang on about helmets and whatever.
Make the road safe for cyclist, problem fixed.
Perhaps the people living
Perhaps the people living there could do a “Clarkson” and work harder and then buy a house with a drive or a garage
There is a very simple way to
There is a very simple way to make the plan acceptable to the residents. Ticket them remorselessly for a couple of months for pavement parking. Then when they are all screening blue murder suggest the plan to permit pavement parking in conjunction with the shared path. They will be grateful for it then…
I detest pavement parkers with a passion. It the time I wish I had a disintegration ray.
http://bamboobadger.blogspot.
http://bamboobadger.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/car-parking-ill-just-leave-this.html?m=1
On road parking is now the norm for so many people – myself included in the last 2 houses I lived in – but it is at the expense of pleasant, liveable spaces. These residents are being gifted a chance to rehumanize their street but you get the impression that they only care about their tonnes of metal & have devised spurious arguments to counter anything that affects their car – love. I may be wrong..
I live in Hinckley (a
I live in Hinckley (a beautiful town, the jewel of the East Midlands 😉 ), and have regularly ridden on Netherley Road. There is no way on God’s sweet earth that it requires any kind of bike path, let alone the half arsed rubbish of a shared path. It might not look it from the photo, but it’s a wide residential road without much traffic. There’s a 90 degree bend part way along that keeps traffic speed down. The only possible reason for this plan is so the local council can say “look, we’ve got x meters more of cycling infrastructure” (even though it’s crap and not needed). There are plenty of roads in the town that do need provision for cyclists. All the main routes into town are narrow, busy and intimidating to cyclists. They do however have large areas of grass between the road and the pavement. The solution for these roads would be too put in proper bike lanes by removing some of these verges, but that would cost a lot more than a tin of white paint, so I can’t see it happening.
Hi Average Jo. Have you fed
Hi Average Jo. Have you fed that back to the Council? You never know, they might re apportion this money to something more useful if you can identify it for them.
I’m not holding much hope, but you never know!