I’ve been getting thoroughly fed up of inconsiderate drivers parking cars on footpaths and readers may remember a post I wrote about this less than a month ago. In the last few days the issue has become front page news at the herald who are encouraging outrage that some people were ticketed for the practice. I wish the media would show the same outrage when a person in a wheelchair or pushing a pram can’t get past a car parked on a kerb

The Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance is backing furious residents of the two Orakei streets after the Weekend Herald revealed that Auckland Council parking wardens fined 27 residents in the early morning sting on cars with two wheels on the kerb.

Residents on Orakei’s Apihai and Tautari streets woke on Thursday to find $40 fines on their windscreens.

“The trouble with Auckland Council is its choice to apply blanket rules rather than common sense,” said Carmel Claridge, a spokesperson for the Ratepayers’ Alliance.

“Here a community have done the right thing by parking on the kerb to allow unimpeded access and reduce the hazard. Rather than let them be, the Council swans in with its ‘we know best’ attitude.”

Claridge said her son lives on the affected Tautari Street and believed if residents followed the rules the space left would make it impossible for emergency service vehicles to pass.

Auckland Transport is sticking by the decision, saying the road is not considered narrow and road markings are not needed to prescribe correct parking.

And you can listen to Carmel on Radio live talking about it here.

I can imagine in other situations where a ratepayers group would be furious if council/AT employed people who then didn’t do their job, a ‘what are we paying them for’ type argument. There can also be an issue – particularly in older suburbs – that vehicles can damage infrastructure just below the service, in particular water pipes. When that happens that can result in significant costs to ratepayers to fix.

Interestingly even on Google Streetview you can see the practice is pretty common.

Kerb Parking Herald

Although a quick check of streetview shows it’s not just cars blocking footpaths. For example there’s this on Apihai St showing little regard for those using the footpath

Kerb Parking Herald 2

The article contains a number of other comments blended in with what appears to be a healthy dose of entitlement.

“The people who live on this street, no one complains about it because everyone has to do it and has done it for years.”

One resident who received a ticket, Lyzadie Renault, said it was safer and more courteous to park half on the footpath.

Her home has no driveway and the family’s Range Rover does not fit inside their old, small garage that sits at street level.

“It’s common sense, it just means that people can get through easily and the whole street does it for that exact reason – nobody is trying to break the rules or is fully blocking the sidewalk, it’s being considerate for people using the road.

“When two cars are parked fully on the road, even if you have a normal-sized car, you have to go really slow, let alone for emergency vehicles or all the construction trucks and vans in this neighbourhood, plus rubbish trucks on Thursdays.”

So we’ve got ‘we’ve always parked illegally so why should we stop now’, ‘I brought a vehicle too big for my garage so should be able to park illegally’ and ‘if people didn’t do this I might have to slow down a little’.

And as you might expect, certain people/groups are jumping in to support the parkers.

Cameron Brewer thinks residents should be able to do what they want because they live in expensive houses.

Orakei councillor Cameron Brewer condemned the blitz as ridiculous. “These people pay huge rates and mean no malice but are being picked on because they’re most likely to stump up the cash to help fill Auckland Transport’s coffers.

“It’s completely unfair and uncalled for. These tickets should be waived forthwith.”

Local board chair Desley Simpson is oddly blaming intensification on something the residents say they’ve done for years

Orakei Local Board chairwoman Desley Simpson said Auckland Transport needed to address the growing issues associated with narrow streets.

“Intensification and narrow streets are causing problems in our older inner-city suburbs,” she said. “Sadly, AT haven’t stepped up to look at options to address this.”

And the AA says people should be able to break rules.

But AA’s senior policy analyst, Mark Stockdale, backs the residents and said the agency should be looking for solutions.

“The public have been ticketed out of the blue for trying to do the right thing by leaving the road clear and not blocking the footpath,” he said.

“It’s the stick instead of the carrot. Yes, the rules are the rules but sometimes the rules don’t make sense – just fining people is not a solution.”

If fining people isn’t the solution and the residents continue to claim that the road is too narrow then it seems there is a quick, cheap and simple solution for Auckland Transport. They should get out the yellow paint and put some dashed lines down at least one side of the road. That’ll solve the problem but somehow I don’t think the residents like the outcome.

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92 comments

    1. The easy answer is a footpath on only 1 side of the road. Why do they need two? That’ll get you all excited. Same logic as cars only parking one side.

      1. Incorrect logic. Correct if only cars allowed down one side of the road.
        We should be asking WHY we need footpaths?
        My thinking is to segregate pedestrians from motorists. Otherwise car users would be restricted to a 10 km/hr speed limit that exists in dedicated shared use zones, because that’s what they’d become, shard use zones.

        1. @Patrick M: Shared spaces for residential streets is the Japanese model.Typically their residential streets will be around 4m wide (that’s total distance between properties, and properties usually have little to no set back). Effect is exactly what you wrote: vehicle speeds plummet, and all users of the street are much safer. Also, another factor to consider is they use smaller blocks, near to dedicated arterials, so you only have to drive slowly for about 400m – 800m at the start and end of your journey.

          Because so little space is devoted to street/road, you can have much higher densities without having to build very high. Seems like a much better model than what we’re currently using, which is wide roads everywhere (further encouraging vehicle use).

      2. There is hardly a space issue on this street. At the time the pic is taken their is not a single pedestrian, car or cycle in use on the entire street. There is plenty of space for everyone.

  1. I thought that a little yellow paint was the answer when I read the Herald article, but didn’t think that the idea would be well received.

    How would they go with a sinking lid residents parking scheme?

    Self entitlement may well prevail over common space.

  2. I’m frustrated at the lack of balance in the articles. Not one mentions that blocking the footpath might inconvenience pedestrians and other footpath users.

    The only difference between this street and Federal Street where I used to live (narrow street, limited parking) is the frequency of warden patrols. Maybe AT need to make warden patrols more frequent in the ‘burbs.

  3. Interesting that street is about as wide as most Stonefields streets – only there the residents lobby the local board (same board as represents resident in these streets here) to provide parking bays at $10K a pop to “fix” their problem.

    In both cases, the cheap and simple fix – of parking allowed on one side only [courtesy of yellow paint] goes down like a fart in phone box.

    These people in both places think that they own these streets – after all the money they paid for their houses of course they own the streets right?

      1. The local board said they had the money in their “SLIPs” or whatever slush fund they call it to do so and were prepared to fork out well over $110k for 11 parking bays.
        BTW: Residents wanted more than double that amount of parking bays but OLB said no, we don’t have the money.

        All so that residents there didn’t need to park illegally on the grass.

        Annoying especially when other groups in OLB area have to miss out on their repeated funding requests due to the priority given the annointed 11 in Stonefields who want to park wherever they like.

        So it would be the Auckland ratepayer paying for those, and not the developer of Stonefields or the residents there.

  4. Gee, they got some problems up Orakei way. One must always be greatful and remember others have it worse. I used to live on Rawhiti in One Tree Hill which gets a bit narrow with cars parked on the the sides but you just slow down. They didn’t park on the footpaths.

    You don’t own the streets! You pay high rates because you have high wealth levels.

  5. Drives me EFFING INSANE

    Look, if a car or truck is allowed to park on the footpath, us pedestrians should be allowed to stop and stand on the road.

    Roads = for cars, bikes, buses
    Footpaths and driveways = for pedestrian

    If you can’t park next to your house, park around the effing corner.

    So. Mad. Right. Now

    1. > if a car or truck is allowed to park on the footpath, us pedestrians should be allowed to stop and stand on the road.

      This is the solution used in some small quiet lanes near me in Sydney: 10 km/h shared zones and left wheels allowed in the footpath in areas defined by road markings.

      It works quite well, but I’m not sure the entitled residents of Orakei referred to here would cope with a 10 km/h speed limit and being required to give way to pedestrians.

  6. If AT put yellow paint in then the next step will be the residents campaigning to have their street rebuilt at the ratepayer’s expense. Be careful what you wish for.

    1. Let it be assessed and given a priority ranking line every other project, doubt it will be very high on any agenda. Perhaps the Local Board can spend their transport fund for the next few decades on it it bring it forward.

      1. Matt you make the mistake of thinking transport money is spent rationally. All it takes is for a determined group to keep annoying their councilors and some parking bays get built regardless of the B/C or policy. People want to park there so find a cheap way of parking there.

    2. Yes, they could take the first 2m metres of each resident’s house under the Public Works Act to ensure the road is wide enough.

      1. That would be a damned expensive solution but yes they could. They would then need to cough up the compensation in accordance with the rip off provisions of that act.

        1. The ‘compensation’ would be to receive a ‘free’ parking spot outside their home 🙂

          An enshrined “culture of entitlement” is what keeps private car transport going, at least in its present form.

  7. >>“Intensification and narrow streets are causing problems in our older inner-city suburbs,” she said.

    I don’t see much intensification on those particular streets. Is ‘intensification’ just an all-purpose scapegoat now?

    ‘People buying cars they don’t have off-street parking for are causing problems’, more like.

    1. Yes claiming intensification is just a way of trying to put blame on others, especially council who these politicians have spent years claiming are the cause of all issues

    2. Intensification is not just “more houses”, its actually is also caused by more cars than off street for residents of those houses.
      And thats what the issue is here – more than 1 or 2 vehicles per house, so they have to park them on the street.

      Same with Stonefields – Stonefields was limited with parking by design – yet the locals want even more parking for all their vehicles as they won’t all fit on the property.
      So instead of parking being for occasional visitors its all used up by greedy locals with a sense of entitlement to “their roads”

  8. Same problem in my street in Browns Bay, so it’s not just the remmers bunch.
    There’s a guy in my street who manages to park a whacking huge truck (like, quarry truck huge) on the street without needing two wheels on the footpath. Plenty of room to get past if you’re a) patient and b) not driving too fast for the environment.
    Also, this half on half off solution to parking is problematic for me walking my dog too. Must really be bad if you’re with a pram or a wheel chair

  9. I used to live in Arthur Street in Freemans Bay. It has 120 minute/residents parking on one side, 5 minute parking on the other. Works really well, and they pay lots in rates.

  10. Wish they’d visit John St in POnsonby — pisses me off every time I walk down there (was really bad when I was pushing a baby in a pram around). Again, so common that the first streetview image I looked at had 2 cars on the footpath https://goo.gl/maps/gowt6

    1. OMG yes. John Street is the worst. It needs yellow lines down one side at least. Otherwise it should just be one way or something. I used to go jogging down it and just used the road.

    2. It should be noted that if your parking doesn’t leave enough space for vehicles to pass then it’s not legal to park there, even if there are no yellow lines. Parking on the footpath to make room is also obviously illegal. So the arguments in the Herald are invalid.

  11. The correct answer is for the City to take an additional berm’s width of land on either side of the street and move the sidewalks to widen the roadway. That will allow for plenty of room for on-street parking. THAT will fix all problems. The property owners won’t be too happy, but…

  12. Have to say from growing up in Wellington those streets don’t even look narrow!
    If you were to use yellow lines they should alternate either side of the road and be used before driveways.
    Roads like this (and a lot narrower) tend to be viewed as 3 lanes, two lanes alternating with parking and a contested central driving lane.
    Also with so many driveways on these suburban streets there are plenty of wider ‘passing bays’ for on coming cars to navigate each other.

  13. Any else one noticed that users of the term ‘common sense’ normally have a below average argument or below average intelligence?

  14. I think this is a bit of a non-issue.

    In the vast majority of situations pedestrians are not inconvenienced by having to use half a footpath or walking around a vehicle.

    You can see in photo #1 that no pedestrian amenity is compromised by the actions of the drivers. You could still fit a two child pram on the footpath and comfortably pass the cars. There will always be some situations where pedestrian amenity is compromised but really this is hardly the biggest issue in Auckland. Even in photo #2 it’s not the car causing the issue it’s the placement of a skip bin.

    The arguments being put forward about entitlement are non-sensical. Aucklanders pay high levels of Rates but see little return. The ability to park one’s car on the road is one of the few times residents get to see some sort of a return on investment.

    When jaywalking is a national pastime and cyclists treat red lights like they don’t exist it’s clear we have lower hanging fruit.

    1. “In the vast majority of situations pedestrians are not inconvenienced by having to use half a footpath or walking around a vehicle”.

      Just like most motorists wouldn’t be inconvenienced if the cars just parked in the middle of the road…

      “When jaywalking is a national pastime and cyclists treat red lights like they don’t exist it’s clear we have lower hanging fruit”.

      Lower hanging fruit like the NZTA staff who sped by more than 10 kph 9,000 times in 9 months?

      Jaywalking isn’t a crime in this country btw… more motorist bull.

        1. “Originally, the legal rule was that “all persons have an equal right in the highway, and that in exercising the right each shall take due care not to injure other users of the way.” In time, however, streets became the province of motorized traffic, both practically and legally. Automobile interests in the USA took up the cause of labeling and scorning jaywalkers in the 1910s and early 1920s; a counter-campaign to name (and disapprove of) “jay drivers” failed”.

          The term jaywalking is a pejorative term promoted by the car industry to reduce the rights of pedestrians in favour of car owners… i.e. motorist bull.

    2. As someone who has a baby and pushes a push chair it is definitely an issue – having to push your baby along the road does not feel safe.
      Personally I think a fine was a bit heavy handed – a letter to residents would have been a better place to start.

    3. No, no you could not fit two prams past the bin and the blue car in the first photo.

      The second photo was posted to illustrate the attitude of the homeowners in the area and their disregard for pedestrians.

      Your comments about entitlements are nonsensical when you then try argue that Auckland’s pay high rates and see little return. Aucklanders do not pay high levels of rates by global standards, and even if Aucklanders did, the act of parking on the footpath would still be illegal.

      There is nothing that can justify breaking the law in this case, with the exception of an actual emergency.

    4. “Aucklanders pay high levels of Rates but see little return.”
      What an idiotic comment. It’s hard to know where to start with this. Do you never tire of always being in the wrong?
      The actual ROADS for a start – all paid by rates; street lights, sewerage, the multitude of duties they are legally required to perform by Wellington (dog licensing, LIMs etc. etc….)

    5. Oh, come on?
      So if I stand on the road I’m not affecting the amenity of drivers because they can still slow down and drive around me?

      Roads are designed for the most efficient movement of cars and buses
      Footpaths are designed for the most efficient movement of pedestrians

      Get the fuck off the footpath. Park somewhere else. Or I will key the shit out of your car (or call AT, depending on mood)

  15. Put no parking lines down one side of the road. Problem solved.

    If people who live here buy cars that are too big for their garages then that’s their problem. Buy a smaller car or build a new garage. Ridiculous.

    1. Auckland City Council had a ‘ruling’ whereby if the carriageway was <6m residents could require council to no-park one side. Worked a treat outside our place…..

  16. Big problem here in Wellington too. Council tend to turn a blind eye unfortunately. Pedestrians get forgotten about- it’s sad to see what little they do get taken over by motorists with a sense of entitlement. Have seen more of those ‘foot’ windscreen notices recently though

  17. Sometimes how you do something is more important why you’ve done it. Sure, it is illegal to park on the footpath and people should not do it.

    Sneaking around like dirty little sneaks at 2am in the dead of night in order ticket people is pretty low behaviour even for jumped up and officious Auckland traffic wardens, whether or not you agree with ticketing people without warning is a good idea. That sort of sly and underhand carry on implies they knew they were doing a dirty deed and it is always going to give people an excuse to get their backs up, especially when it is defended using the pious, holier than thou claptrap Auckland Council uses.

    The Supercity parking wardens care about as much about the law being broken as the local residents, and these exercises are simply a cash grab from a council desperate for cash dressed up with a fig leaf of legal/safety justification. Residents should have been at least warned the blitz was coming, and why – people simply might not have paused to think about their parking being an issue for the disabled. Then they wouldn’t have a thing to moan about.

    As it stands, it just looks like the council is bringing the law into disrepute by being nothing more than underhand extortionists of otherwise law abiding and rate paying citizens.

    1. Cash grab – really? A few $40 fines is hardly going to make a dent in the council’s coffers!
      It was underhanded but I doubt the motive was the cash.

      1. Seriously, a cash grab? You think they actually make any money off this sort of thing?

        And sneaking around at 2am, hardly, they were called out by a resident.

    2. Yeah, while I don’t agree with the footpath parking, I’ve also been thinking that a 2am ‘dawn raid’ is a bit off.

    3. Wardens were called by a resident in the street. Yes, the residents were dobbed in by one of their own.

      Once there they cannot ignore other problems in the area. Arguing give them notice or sneaking around like dirty little sneaks isn’t actually the case. How do you think “Hi, I know it’s 2 am but you need to move your car” go down? Hell I’d pay the $40 fine to be able to keep sleeping.

    4. I imagine that you get so much abuse as a warden from entitled motorists that, if I had to that job, I’d want to do night shift.

  18. What a storm in a teacup Matt. If you looked at the actual road in question and the photos posted in the Herald, parking partly on the footpath (it is legal to park on berms btw) allows other vehicles to get past. Even the emergency services were quoted in the article as saying they appreciated being able to get past on the narrow street.

    1. Actually a 2012 Auckland city bylaw prohibits parking on berms. Something to do with damaging all those pesky underground utilities.

  19. Ticket every night please, helps keep my rates down. It would also solve the problem and avoid the cost of yellow paint.

  20. I think this is overkill. What advantage to the drivers get by spanning the footpath? None. They are clearly doing it to avoid blocking the street if both they and people on the other side parked on the road, both of which are legal.

    I am going to go out on a limb and say they reason they are only just on the footpath is to allow access past for pedestrians. Which it looks like they do.

    if it was such a big issue for AT then put some flyers on the car windows, as a warning.

    1. Parking on the footpath is never legal and endangers pedestrians. AT left a note rather than towing vehicles.

    2. But by blocking the road they block the footpath.
      What if me and of my mates wanted to run a sprint race along that street? We can’t.

      I’m using a deliberately absurd analogy here so you can get it through your thick head that you can’t always drive in a “sprint race” and sometimes you have to slow down because the road is narrow because people park on the road.

      If you do not want to park on the road, park elsewhere. Nobody gives you a right to have a street park outside your front door. I have two parks that I paid for as they are on my property.

  21. Memo to the New Zealand Herald: Articles like this are exactly what keep me from buying your newspaper. If you stopped printing this kind of one-sided nonsense, I’d be willing to purchase a subscription.

  22. I just found out that the reason the warden was there in the first place was AT received a complaint that someone was parked blocking a driveway. Once there the warden can’t then just ignore all other infringements around him/her.

  23. How much of our rates are spent on rehabilitating footpaths? Footpaths are not constructed to the same level as road ways and thus break up very quickly from the weight of illegally parked motor vehicles. How many cracked and broken footpaths are due to pedestrians?
    I say $40 is way too low for a fine. Massively increase the fine or this will be just another social subsidy to motorists, especially self centred and self entitled motorists.

  24. So, I have some sympathy for both sides here… I completely understand that you shouldnt be regularly blocking foot-paths, but I have (about 15 years ago) found myself ticketed for parking with wheels on footpath in a narrow-ish suburban street… and I got off the ticket after writing a letter to the council…

    What really gave me the shits, and caused me to complain, (but probably was not relevant to whether I had broken a law or not), was the fact that the infringement notice had been handed out at approximately (facts dimmed through time passing) 2:30 am… in suburban Avondale-Blockhouse-Bay fringe Shoreham street (not exactly a hot-spot of late-night activities or ongoing parking issues requiring frequent monitoring/intervention)… Why are there parking notices being handed out at 2:30 am anywhere outside Queen St/K Rd/Fort St/ Viaduct Basin?

    The reason I got off, was that I was unable to use my drive-way and park off-road, on account of the council having dug up said drive-way, but not completing the work and making it passable…

    The reason I was parked with two wheels on the footpath instead of completely on the road (outside my house), was because the across-the-road neighbour always parked on the road, and another neighbour a few doors up the road ran a small trucking/courier service and parked a couple of big van / small trucks in the street and I thought it was a good idea to let them past easily…

    For the purpose of clarity… I was probably taking up 30-50cm of footpath, leaving about 1m of footpath and another 2m of grass for pedestrians (in hind-sight, this may not have left enough room for wheelchairs to pass without using the grass?)

    So, considering my drive-way that I normally parked on, was unable to be used due to council caused issues (which only lasted 1 or 2 days), was blocked and unusable, and I was trying to make both road and footpath useable to the people I knew were in the area (obviously, mobility/access should be 24/7, but I was not aware of any regular users of the footpath using anything larger or more cumbersome than a walking stick)… does that make me an entitled arsehole, or a reasonable human being trying to make the best of what’s available, not just for myself, but for all?

    So, parking on footpath everyday because I bought a vehicle that didn’t fit in my garage… yeah, that seems entitled…. but there are shades of grey, and I’m not sure where the border is?

    1. Was it down the bottom of Shoreham? Because I can guarantee based on police records that that part of the street is indeed a hotbed of late night activity.

      And Shoreham is wide as hell!!

    2. I believe they frequently do night time patrols of all the suburbs with high levels of on-street parking to look for people with expired WOFs and Vehicle Licenses. But also, apparently this case was called in by someone with a blocked driveway leading to the ticketing of all the other illegally parked cars too.

  25. “…I just found out that the reason the warden was there in the first place was AT received a complaint that someone was parked blocking a driveway…”

    Are you seriously trying to tell me that AT has a flying squad of crack parking wardens on permanent 24×7 standby just on the off chance they’ll get to crack a big case like a blocked driveway at 2am on a weeknight? Seriously?

    1. Yes. A towie can’t legally tow a vehicle from a public street without a parking officer issuing the infringement notice first (private property is different). So indeed AT does have a ‘flying squad’ of parking wardens on duty 24/7 to respond to such issues as a blocked in driveway, or worse.

    2. And if AT had 10x the number of wardens on 24/7 duty we’d actually solve enough congestion problems to not need extra roads.

    3. Yes they do. I gave them a call once when a dozen or so cars were completely blocking a road illegally parked. It was early on a Sunday morning and a tow truck arrived about 1 min later. I mustn’t have been the only one calling. On the phone they did mention that there is a 1 hour response time. It’s a similar service to noise control I guess.

    1. Nice bit of whataboutery. This article is ALL about sticking to the ‘rules’ – or law as it is in this case.
      Are YOU for or against parking on the footpath?

  26. The farcical thing is: that street is easily wide enough for cars to park on either side, legally, without blocking through traffic or the footpaths. Bloody Humans of Remuera just can’t drive.

    As for the substantial issue – a lot of our parking rules are petty overkill. No parking on pointless decorative grass, having to leave a metre gap at driveways, no parking facing the “wrong way”, wild overuse of no-stopping lines where it would be fine for people to stop for a minute or two.

    But no parking on the footpath isn’t like that. We have footpaths because cars going 50 are not compatible with humans walking, and they need a safe place to do so. It’s either total contempt for others, or the product of thoughtlessness from someone who literally never walks anywhere – often the latter. There’s people on my street who’ll park on the footpath or a fire hydrant to avoid walking twenty metres. How do you deal with that, except fines?

  27. “Snap send solve” seems to work pretty effectively in Christchurch. It enables you to provide evidence to council immediately, and I’ve had council parking officers call me back to confirm what they’re doing. Has helped stop parking on a pedestrian area (the Esplanade in Sumner which I would have thought was fairly obviously not for cars). Now to stop people parking on the coastal pathway, the extra footpath width is obviously too tempting…

  28. I notice you did not include this piece from the article:

    On a section of Tautari St measured by the Herald, where two cars were parked correctly on the road there was just over 2m of space between them for vehicles to drive through.
    The footpaths on each side were slightly wider than 3m.

    That would ruin your whinge, of course, but it’s very pertinent. Most cars will barely fit through a 2m-wide space, and an ambulance or fire appliance absolutely will not; not even by folding in their mirrors.
    Maximum no-permit-required legal width of a motor vehicle is 2.5m. If two cars, legally parked, reduce the width of the road to less than that, the road is a problem.

    You don’t get to gripe about the Herald’s one-sided, one-eyed coverage of things and then engage in precisely the same activity yourself. It’s called hypocrisy.

    1. “If two cars, legally parked, reduce the width of the road to less than that, the road is a problem.”

      But it is not legal to park in such a way that you block the road. See the road code link about, salient point:

      You must not park or stop your vehicle…where it will be in the way of other people using the road (including pedestrians)

      1. I’d like to see that one argued in court. If you have parked in a manner that is entirely legal other than reducing the clearway width below the standard legal maximum width of a vehicle – and most people don’t know that it’s 2.5m – have you actually blocked the road? That’s getting very philosophical, and most people would say that the road is not blocked since there is a clear corridor between the two cars.

  29. OK, from these comments the solution seems pretty obvious. 1.) If cars park on both sides of the road legally, they will block the road; 2.) Therefore, by definition, the street is not wide enough for legal parking on both sides 3.) Therefore, parking should only be legal on one side of the street 4.) Therefore, Auckland Transport should paint yellow lines down one side of the street. Simple.

    1. I live on a lovely narrow Victorian street. We all make do by staggering on-street parking and folding mirrors in, driving slowly, and giving way to each other etc. I would not want to see yellow lines down one side, as all that would achieve is faster vehicles and less parking. Visitors, especially in vast German SUVs park on the footpath, and as there is no berm at all this is extremely inconsiderate, I often point this out to people who are almost always polite and considerate thereafter.

      Really when people park like this they are thinking of keeping their cars away from being scratched, it isn’t a great act of selflessness for other drivers, and of course not other non motorised road users. I love our slow street where kids on bikes are going at the same speed, but with more freedom, than car drivers. It is extremely safe and so what if a few seconds are added to your car journey? All new quiet residential streets should be this narrow, the land waste in new subdivisions is criminal.

      1. +1

        Parking on the footpath is done primarily to prevent horrific corner damage to cars while we know narrowing of the road space reduces speed, increases safety and gives pedestrians their footpath.

  30. Any time *anybody* gets morally outraged at council, no matter how wrong they may be, the media automatically takes their side. It’s the anti-government, “nobody-can-tell-me-to-do nothin” mentality (approximate level of development, 14 years old) which sells newspapers. It is also a symptom of a cars-uber-alles philosophy of development which is the subject of many posts on this blog so I won’t belabour it.

  31. Here is the Councils Policy on narrow streets:

    “Policy 3C:

    Narrow Residential Streets

    Many older residential streets are very narrow and overcrowded parking areas can cause access problems, particularly for emergency services. People sometimes park on the footpath on these narrow streets, which degrades the pedestrian amenity of the street. Emergency services have advised that they require at least 2.5 metres of clearance to allow for sufficient access down streets in case of an emergency.

    If a street is less than 6.5 metres in width and there are known access problems, AT will complete an assessment of the street. If it is determined that there are limited places for vehicles to pass and emergency access may be compromised, AT will propose to remove parking on one side of the street. This will be done by applying a No Stopping restriction (broken yellow lines) to alternating sides of the street to assist in slowing vehicles down. Consultation will always be carried out with all residents in the street when this is proposed.”

    Source: page 25 here https://at.govt.nz/media/1119147/Auckland-Transport-Parking-Strategy-May-2015.pdf

    6.5m width seems a little low to me, I think this policy should kick in around 7.0m. That would give a 250mm clearance either side of a 2.5m wide fire truck if two 1.95m wide ute (VW Amaroks) are parked either side of the road, with the wheels 50mm from the kerb, and all mirrors are folded in.

  32. $40 fine? That could be part of the problem. The cheapest parking fine I’ve ever received in NSW is $120 for going over the time limit.

  33. re – concerns that no parking on one side encourages speeding. It’s possible to have the parking alternating from side to side, so the parked cars become a form of traffic calming. For example see Avenue de Riant-Parc, Geneva (sorry, don’t know how to link to Google maps) – parking spaces marked in blue.

  34. Great to see that commonsense has prevailed and the council has admitted they screwed up and has waived the tickets. Revenue gathering all along.

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