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Entirely unashamed anti car propaganda, and the more the better.

It's not just width but height and length too.

Length is a problem when cars start overhanging pedestrian pavements because they are parked in off-road spaces that aren't long enough.

Height is a general problem for pedestrian safety and streetscape impact.

I'd agree that the mega-SUV type things are the main issue and should be the priority for doing something about. But the gradual expansion of "normal" cars has a kind of insidious effect and I think there should be some kind of pricing-based incentive to keep the average below whatever hard upper limits get set. Road pricing linked to vehicle volume, something like that.

Vandalising the portions of vehicles that overhang pedestrian areas should also be legalised and encouraged.
 
teuchter said:
It's not just width but height and length too.
Click to expand...
Height on "normal" cars has gone up by 5-10cm (depending on whether you consider small crossovers "normal"). But I think it's likely to stay there. People have been happier with their cars being slightly higher, and it was coming from a low in the 80s and 90s where low-slung was "cool". 50s and 60s cars were somewhat more in line with what standard cars are now, though we're still taller now. (eg: A 1970s 5-series was taller than an early 90s 5-series, but the current one is 8cm up on that) But then we are taller. 1.5-1.6m seems to be what average people are content with now and even covers the small SUV segment. I don't see that segment getting much taller, but I do see the average going up with the humungo SUV sales. I reckon it's a long overdue adjustment for how much taller the average person is now, but we went through that low=cool thing for a while and it's adjusted quite quickly after that. And that's ignoring the whole trend for 19+" wheels.

Length isn't really a big issue for the best selling car segments. The Fiesta we talked about may be as wide and tall as an old Focus, but it's still considerably shorter than it. The trend has been to expand wheelbase massively, but with little effect on the overall length of the car. We're getting the same/more space, but the car is laid out more efficiently than it was in the past. Again, it's the big dinos that are skewing numbers and the mass market hasn't changed that much. The Focus went up 20cm in 25 years and as a fraction of its length (over 4m), it's negligible.
 
teuchter said:
I think the height thing is rather critical and relatively small increases can have significant consequences, as I tried to explain back in this post.
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I don't disagree, but I do think it's a lost cause to try and reverse the trend. That 10cm is gone and we'll probably have to fight and complain to keep it where it is. Fwiw, my car is not an SUV, is narrower than most new cars, but was 153cm high when introduced in 2006. And no one complained it was outrageous then, it was just on the taller side and now it's decidedly average. Was useful when my f-i-l was still alive to get his 6'3" frame in the back seat comfortably.
 
“Scott Arthur, City of Edinburgh Council's transport and environment convener, said he had faith in motorists realising when they were blocking a road”

lol what the fuck has he been smoking :D
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
“Scott Arthur, City of Edinburgh Council's transport and environment convener, said he had faith in motorists realising when they were blocking a road”

lol what the fuck has he been smoking :D
Click to expand...
True - but imagine having to paint double yellows everywhere. Drivers really need to take some bloody responsibility.
 
The roads where bin lorries can only get down them if cars are either on the pavements or parked on one side only ... in pragmatic terms, the council does have to paint double yellows along one side doesn't it? It seems a bit silly to hope that things will just magically self organise, even in a world where all drivers had the best intentions.
 
teuchter said:
The roads where bin lorries can only get down them if cars are either on the pavements or parked on one side only ... in pragmatic terms, the council does have to paint double yellows along one side doesn't it? It seems a bit silly to hope that things will just magically self organise, even in a world where all drivers had the best intentions.
Click to expand...
Depends if the residents want their bins to be collected really.
 
More 2-3 level off street parking is needed. I hate on street parking but we sadly cannot just get rid of it without taking steps to accommodate different areas to park.

Because we've literally built the country around cars and the expectation they can go and park anywhere. Cutting that off means nothing but fucking people over and breeding resentment.

Japam deals with no street parking well, build some car parks for residential areas and fuck the nimbys
 
Artaxerxes said:
More 2-3 level off street parking is needed. I hate on street parking but we sadly cannot just get rid of it without taking steps to accommodate different areas to park.

Because we've literally built the country around cars and the expectation they can go and park anywhere. Cutting that off means nothing but fucking people over and breeding resentment.

Japam deals with no street parking well, build some car parks for residential areas and fuck the nimbys
Click to expand...
A big part of this is getting rid of the idea that you must be able to park right outside your house, rather than within 5 mins walk.
 
Artaxerxes said:
More 2-3 level off street parking is needed. I hate on street parking but we sadly cannot just get rid of it without taking steps to accommodate different areas to park.

Because we've literally built the country around cars and the expectation they can go and park anywhere. Cutting that off means nothing but fucking people over and breeding resentment.

Japam deals with no street parking well, build some car parks for residential areas and fuck the nimbys
Click to expand...
Dont think I’m we should be building more car parking - it only encourages car use.

The problem in Edinburgh (and the rest of the country) is there’s lots of areas with no parking controls. These should be put in and people charged for parking everywhere. We need to stop giving public space away for free.
 
edcraw said:
Dont think I’m we should be building more car parking - it only encourages car use.

The problem in Edinburgh (and the rest of the country) is there’s lots of areas with no parking controls. These should be put in and people charged for parking everywhere. We need to stop giving public space away for free.
Click to expand...


We are in a tough spot, it's absolutely normal for houses to not have anywhere to park and that needs to be addressed by shoving some land on existing streets into a car park. I’ve lived on streets where it’s just residents cars on the pavement or beside the road and they need to go somewhere.


Ideally we'd have more buses and trains and bikes and feet but those cost money the various governments won’t spend.


Multiprong approach to tackling it needs to be taken, both banning it and providing alternatives
 
How many streets are there, where (a) parking along one side only would not provide enough spaces for all the residents, and (b) there are no streets within a 5 minutes walk which have capacity for their own residents plus some overspill from nearby one-side-only streets?

I don't know the answer to that, but would guess that in the majority of places, it's quite feasible to create a CPZ that provides enough spaces for all the residents within it, even if not everyone can park on their own street.
 
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