WCC will ticket cars blocking footpaths next year
twitter.com/WgtnCC/status/1470966870073348097
twitter.comPosted Dec 15, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC
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twitter.comNot acceptable parking up on a footpath as per the picture to bypass the yellows, that's taking the piss. Lots more dashed yellows are going to to be needed to be painted to stop streets from being blocked to through traffic by vehicles parked on both sides of the road.
35
Raroa road is going to be utter chaos.
Most of it isn't wide enough for parked cars plus 2 lanes of traffic now (in places, even if the cars park on the footpath), and of course it's a bloody bus route too.
31
I freaking hate being stuck behind a goddamn bus belching fumes and going slow as hell up raroa!!
2
Good. This is a constant issue where I am and while it might be fine for me to step out and walk along the road, that option's not really available for someone in a wheelchair.
31
Or someone with a baby/small children.
22
About damn time. I live on a hill and a significant chunk of my walk home is spent in the middle of the street because the footpaths are lined with cars.
26
There are definitely places in Wellington where having two wheels on the curb is absolutely necessary for the road to be passable. If we yellow-dash those places, local cars still need to park somewhere. My prediction is they'll just sprawl out into wider neighboring streets and the problem will be even more visible, with even less space.
I hate how clogged up with cars Wellington's streets are getting, but is this even a solution?
23
Onto side streets is fine. Noone has a right to store their private property on any particular public property. Roads are for transport
28
Exactly. It blows my mind that people seem to think that the council needs to provide them with on street parking. No! If you can't park your car/s on your property, then don't own one. Simple.
8
wow, lookit the nuance we got over here
-3
"Local cars still need to park somewhere"
What happened back in the day? This seems to not be a need - people managed to live in narrow streets ok. for generations. If cars now have a need, let them find a solution.
13
Yeah, I've also definitely had unsympathetic feelings like that too! The ideal solution to the problem of cars parked on curbs is to decrease reliance on cars and remove them from the transport system as much as possible. Unfortunately, widespread car use is a hard Pandora's box to close - it encourages people to live further from work, often travelling up long or steep hills, and generally informs city design in a way that makes it more and more difficult to implement any effective alternative transit. It also sets up certain common expectations about how fast and easy a commute should be - an hour on a bike to work uphill on dangerous roads is a hard sell to many commuters. On top of all of that, it also pushes up the price of high-density inner-city housing when cars allow more people to work in an area than can live there.
Yes, people lived fine in the past before widespread car use, but only because the layout of the city was much less catered to cars than it is now. Sadly I think asking car owners to 'find a solution' without encouraging them towards pubic transport will only result in more ugly, inefficient car parking lots/buildings, and more houses built/renovated to have off-street parking in a time when Wellington desperately needs all the space it can get for housing.
10
Public transport is the simple answer. Prioritise it. Make it faster than private vehicles and the rate of use will skyrocket.
11
While i agree with alot of that, the point of high density inner-city housing is to be close enough to all amenities to not need a car.
I'd say other issues around this are cars getting bigger (some due to factors like increased safety standards), but also people buying bigger cars, and families going from 1 car to multiple cars per family. Putting more pressure on off-street parking space.
Saying that, ebicycles are becoming much more viable for trips, even shopping, as are more powerful personal electric vehicles (escooters, skateboards, unicycles etc), and walking is a good healthy no-car option.
I don't know how you wean people off cars, but it has shown to work in cities in Europe for example. It does feel like kiwis are quite attached to their cars, in that unhealthy american way, with city design reflecting that. I guess it's a chicken-and-egg situation that got us here, but if government doesnt lead/influence back out, people may not choose too.
Eventually climate change policies will probably disincentivise cars quite heavily, who knows how long that will take, but i can agree in principle with ticketing cars on footpaths.
8
Probably in the old days many of these houses were occupied by a family. They would have one car at best. Now it's pretty normal to see a 3-4-5 car household.
6
What happened for years is people just didn’t buy so many cars. Car ownership has ROCKETED up since 1990, exponentially really. Houses used to have one car per household and now have 2 or 3. Multiple that per every house and there is just too many. At a macro level, we just need less cars. So yeah, all those FB commentators need to evaluate why they live in a house that has not enough off street parking for their car needs.
6
Yes, agree totally.
We moved from a place that had parking space for +100 cars (rural) to a resident parking zone. We had two cars, sold one. If we wanted to retain two cars (or 100 for that matter) we should not live in a resident parking zone area.
5
Another factor is probably that in the past it was more of an option to be a couple owning a home and sharing a car, whereas with the housing crisis now you're more likely to have several flatmates all with their own cars as people can't afford their own place.
4
Cars are a lot wider than they used to be.
1
But now it's one car per adult and back in the day it was 1 or 2 per household.
1
Mandatory offstreet parking
3
If you're going to leave your car on the street, at least leave the keys in it so everyone can use it. The public road is not the place to store your private goods.
1†
Ohiro road brooklyn is one of those places as big trucks end up smashing peoples cars and mirrors constantly
1
Just a friendly reminder that parking on a footpath is against the law.
From 1 February 2022 we may issue tickets to vehicles partially parked on a footpath.
Please help to keep footpaths accessible by finding a safer place to park.
posted by @WgtnCC
^(Github) ^| ^(What's new)
17
Why say "may".
Just do it.
11
They're not ticketing them already?
Apart from blocking pedestrians, this tends to munt the footpath
11
Several years ago WCC publically said, "yes this is illegal but we won't enforce it".
2
I wish there was a way of funnelling the increased fines straight into making public transport cheaper (or free)
2
There isnt because PT is looked after by the regional council
1
I know :(
1
Man, there are going to be a LOT of tradies fined. In my area it seems to be almost exclusively the builders, plasterers, plumbers utes parked half on the footpath on the average weekday. They don't even need to usually, there's plenty of room, they just habitually do it.
2
Finally!
2
We have a neighbour down the road that is constantly blocking foot traffic doing this.
three people live in the house but they have 5 cars...
Looking forward to pulling a Karen and dobbing them in :D
1
If they really do this in the hilly suburbs it will cover the water issues with enough left over for light rail and a few new convention centres.
1
Also need to do it to delivery vehicles, walked along Vivian street twice today and both times there were massive tricks parked right in the middle of the pavement with their engines running and no one inside.
-1†
A lot more sympathetic for that kind of thing.
5
Why? Still against the law, still blocking the path for other users.
Delivery drivers from my experience seem to think the rules don't apply to them and need to be cracked down on.
-1
Almost no buildings in town have delivery docks. Businesses rely on logistics.
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I just went by a building with delivery docks out front, funnily enough, and thought, "how unusual".
It must be that they were mostly built with the understanding that parking was some else's problem, and never designed for that need.
1
The entitlement of so many of the commenters on the WCC Facebook page is fucking ridiculous.
"I HAVE!! to park MY CAR on the footpath, if I park on the road I will block the road"
Why is it ok to block the footpath but not the road? Imagine if pedestrians started walking 2 abreast on the road so they wouldn't block the footpath for other pedestrians. These same vehicle owners would probably loose their shit. It's ok for them to do it but not when the roles are reversed.
Then there are the usual arguments about the elderly and people on crutches needing to park outside there house when in reality the majority of offenders are perfectly able bodied and capable of walking hundreds of meters.
But I bought a house with no off-street parking, I'm entitled to park anywhere.
But I have to park outside my house. 25m is too far to walk.
FFS
Yeaaah. This entitlement that comes with owning a property..
Fire trucks.
Unfortunately there are plenty examples in Wellington where an emergency vehicle would not be able to reach its destination even with cars already half parked on the footpath. I fear that it takes a serious incident to happen first before Council realises that.
As much as I hate cars parked on the footpath, I prefer that in our windy narrow roads over blocking a road so that emergency vehicles can't get through. If both are not an option the Council should just make the entire street or sections where this is an issue car-park-free.
We have to stay realistic, cars are not going to disappear anytime soon, so better to find a practical and safe way to live with them for now, rather than banning them without providing a good alternative.
In the most extreme cases yes. But now pedestrians are being impeded. If you can't park your vehicle fully on the road while keeping it passable then the reasonable thing to do would be park on another street.
But even on reasonably wide streets it's still a problem. Adelaide Rd for example has full size painted spaces on the road yet there's a section where all the cars will still park 2 wheels up on the footpath.
Fire trucks are more than capable of snapping a car breakline and pushing it out the way, and are legally exempt from damage liability.
Yes the council will have to deploy a lot of no parking lines on streets.
The taxpayers not exempt from that liability
Try it.
By the time they've done that a couple of times the fire will be so involved there's no point going.
They shouldn't have to though. This will slow them down and could potentially cost lives.
The bottom line is parking does not come before vehicle access or pedestrian safety.
Maybe we need to invest in smaller fire trucks? Why do they all need to be so big?
/s right?
Right?
Looking at this link here: https://www.piercemfg.com/pierce/blog/types-of-fire-trucks
The only type of fire engine I see here in NZ are the Type 1 kind. I'm not saying get rid of those. They are still useful for the majority of fires, but having some Type 2 or Type 3 trucks would be useful to have too, especially when it comes to smaller streets.
Well, they do have a point. welly streets are tiny-as.
Because the council is responsible for infrastructure, There's not enough parks, if they take some away they have to add it back somewhere. If both sides of my street park with all four wheels on the road there won't be enough space to drive down the road. Council problem... Fix the roads, buses can't even stay in there own lanes.
Private car parks are your responsibility citizen.
Providing a storage solution for your unused private vehicle is not a council responsibility.