UKC

Just down the road from us is a section of road, about two or three hundred yards where, during the week people working locally park on both sides of the road. Apart from white line indicating resident's drive entrances there are no parking restrictions. Consequently the road, normally amply wide enough for two vehicles to pass, is effectively reduced to a single lane. This has led to numerous potentially confrontational situations between drivers approaching each other from opposite directions.

I'm drafting a letter to the local highways department to suggest that they impose parking restriction in the form of a yellow line at least on one side of the road.

Has anyone else had a similar experience; if so was it resolved and how long did it take?

In reply to mypyrex:

Have you got any thoughts about the place that you'll be shifting this problem onto?

In reply to Lusk:


Not particularly; that's a problem for the Highways Authority and does not solve the problem in our neighbourhood. Anyway that was not my question.

In reply to mypyrex:
I think my parents talked to the council about imposing a parking restriction on one side of the road a long time ago (when I was a child) outside their house; in the end the council imposed restrictions on one side of the street, unsurprisingly for something run by local government it took about 18 months.

In reply to climbwhenready:


Thanks. Restrictions on one side are really all that is needed. I came along that stretch earlier today and once a vehicle "gives way" there is a noticeable reluctance on the part of those in the opposite direction to ease up and let them through.

In reply to climbwhenready:

It is a legal process that requires statutory periods of consultation, advertising and then a court date. It also costs the local authority about £4000, plus staff time and the cost of any road marking.

To the OP: For the reasons above, you will need a good case and lots of local support. In these days of disappearing budgets, that means public safety.

In reply to The New NickB:



I think that the situation I have mentioned could have safety implications; for instance an emergency vehicle trying to gain access.

In reply to mypyrex:

I suspect you will need a stronger case, but talk to your neighbours and work together to make it an issue for you local councillors.

Officers will judge on its merits and it priority within their budgets, councillors will try and do whatever gets them votes.

In reply to The New NickB:

OK, I might have been being deliberately inflammatory there. But does the consulation etc. really have to take that long?

In reply to climbwhenready:

It's not just the consultation. It is a legal and democratic process. I'm sure it could be done a bit quicker, but 12 months+ still.

In reply to mypyrex:

Anything that fights car culture gets my vote. Good luck.

In reply to Phil1919:

Does making the road easier to drive down but harder to park on fight car culture? Genuine question.

In reply to Lusk:


If it's anywhere like here, an area with ample spare and safe parking that involves the driver walking another 30 seconds to 5 minutes....

In reply to The New NickB:


Possibly the LA/legal system could give consideration to reducing the cost of painting lines from £4k (plus staff time) to something sensible instead? Casual assertions about insane costs for trivial tasks such as this are what make claims about council and court finances being at breaking point hard to believe.

In reply to MG:
Tell the government, councils don't set these fees.

These are what the council pays. Sorry that makes your point look rather silly.

In reply to The New NickB:

Yes how silly of me. Of course a different set beaurocrats wasting tax money is much better.

In reply to MG:

If you don't understand the difference in relation to your point, I can't help you!

In reply to The New NickB:


Apologies for not having detailed knowledge on which arm of government charge £xxxk for white lines. It was the £xxxk bit that bothers me, and youor casual acceptance of it, that was my point, not the accounting, which to stands just fine, whatever you think.

In reply to MG:

This is what I take exception to:


Firstly it not casual it is reality. Secondly these are costs paid by the local authority, so in reality they contribute to local authority financies being at breaking point. I agree the costs are high, part of this is for things like advertising, but Traffic Regulation Orders are expensive, I wish they weren't, but it is something local authorities have to deal with and the reality is, they have less and less resources to do so.

In reply to mypyrex:

I'm trying to get my road made into a one way system, it's absolute chaos when cars are parked on both side with cars backing up on to a busy road and the parking situation for residents keeps getting worse as they extend the double yellows further from the corners. There's also a primary school down the road and the school run parents are just mental, so long as they get their kid to school on time and alive they couldn't care less for the rest of the world.

My only reservation is that the roads going up the hill would get more noise than the others with cars revving and struggling to get out onto the busy top road.

Is sounds like I'd be moving out by the time they implement it if it ever got the go ahead.

In reply to mypyrex:
Yellow lines...it's a bit of a sore point with me!
Where I am in Manc on a quiet junction, Mr Busy Body on opposite corner got double yellows painted, guy has enough space to park 10 cars outside his house.
Sometimes, come home late on a Saturday night, absolutely nowhere to park for half a mile... so park on the lines.
The f*cking parking attendents book you before 8AM on a Sunday morning!!! The place is DEAD!


Mr Angry of Chorlton!

In reply to Bob_the_Builder:

I would think making the road easier to drive down but harder to park on would fight car culture. Bristol has this problem and sure, the problem gets moved on, but they are trying to tackle it holistically. Our habits are very difficult to change but not having a car or working towards not having one is the best solution in my opinion. Less cars equals less problems and has many good spinoffs.

In reply to Phil1919:

Says the man who lives in a city.

In reply to mypyrex:

75% of Bristol is exactly as you describe, glad I don't live there anymore.
Solution is obviously not very easy!

In reply to JamButty:

The solutions are definitely not easy as none of us like to change our habits. We just want other people to change theirs.

In reply to XXXX:

I live in Kendal. Family live in Bristol.

In reply to Phil1919:
Town then? You have a station, buses, jobs and shops near enough to walk. My point still stands.

In reply to XXXX:


Agreed. Three minutes down the road and I get a good view of the east side of the Carneddau and yet, without a vehicle, it is about a three hour journey to get there.

In reply to Phil1919:


You talk as if "car culture" is something you have a choice about. I don't.

In reply to Ava Adore:

If you don't feel you can make any changes that would keep you out of a car or reduce your mileage then you will be faced with all the downsides of owning and driving one which you will have to weigh up against the advantages. Its funny how we consider something an essential item which has only been around for a short time. I just base my feelings on watching plenty of people drive around Bristol who don't really need to, in cars that are overpowered and obviously status symbols compensating them for other shortcomings in their lives.

In reply to XXXX:

I'm not sure of your point. I've consciously moved into town so that I can manage without a car. It won't be an option for everyone, but its not chance that I live near what I need.

In reply to Phil1919:


That is such a lame pathetic thing to say. People choose cars for all sorts of reasons, in the same way they choose other things for all sorts of reasons. Some people need big cars. And even if they don't, they can choose to have one for whatever reason without it being linked to shortcomings in their lives. Sure, some people quite happily manage without cars. Some people could quite happily manage without cars but choose not to. Some people cannot manage without cars. You can't just throw them all into one box and proclaim to know about their lives. You have no monopoly on insight into other people's lives here despite your self-righteous opinion.

In reply to Phil1919:

It's hard work, moving towards a situation where you're not car centric for travel. I lived just 8 miles from my workplace for 16 years or thereabouts, where cycling to work was a 35 minute journey, driving in was 40 to 50 mins, and public transport was over 2 hours. I found that, for me, riding in every day didn't work - not fit enough, and sometimes there are days when you need to carry a bit more or where it would be good to do the food shop on the way home.

Oddly, I moved house nearly two months ago, and was determined to try the work commute without the car - so instead of being 8 miles away I moved to 15 miles away but with a train service and a bike ride which now feels like exercise not just transport. It took a true decision not a drift to the point of car free commuting. Even on the days I go in by train I have a mile to walk from home to the station and a mile from the end point station to work, and the same again in reverse in the evening. That's kind of my point, it is, as you say, hard to change a habit, but it's not just something which takes place in your mind, it takes work, decision making and compromises to get there. Your mind has to be committed, but there's an enormous amount of other factors which need to be tackled, and they aren't always simple.

I couldn't do it if I had childcare needs, I couldn't have done it without the job to finance the move, I couldn't have done it without a reasonable cycling base so that 15 miles twice a day doesn't scare me off. I couldn't have done it if I didn't have a supermarket walking distance from home, if I didn't have friends locally, if I didn't have the option of working from home on occasion, if I didn't have the option of flexible hours, if I didn't work near a station. It's a luxury to be able to commute without a car and I am fortunate.

In reply to nickinscottishmountains:

I realise its just about impossible to argue these things on here so I will pull out. But I really don't envy people who will be in tonight's traffic jams, on long car commutes, perhaps faced with big repair bills etc. And as someone who cycles a lot I 've looked into a lot of people's eyes who drive range rovers around towns, and....well.....I may be generalising but they don't drive them out of need. As a race, we reap what we sow I guess.

In reply to Phil1919:

What's wrong with not driving them out of need?

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

Thanks for that. I agree it is not easy.

In reply to nickinscottishmountains:

I'll leave it there Nick, but just look at the amount of traffic on the road.

In reply to Phil1919:

Do you have a fridge? We didn't those 60 years ago either. Must therefore be a complete waste of space, energy and money and unneeded. I've looked many Bosch owners in the eyes and, well, they don't look like they need them.

In reply to Phil1919:


How on earth do you know that they don't need to?

By all means feel smug about not owning a car and being "green" but you have no idea what is going on in other people's lives that makes a car essential so don't presume to judge other people on that basis.

In reply to Ava Adore:


I'm happy to stick to passing judgements on people who buy very expensive, massively overpowered cars (that is about 90% of those now on the roads) on finance and then complain about being poor.

A happy medium I find.

Most cars are over powered, over polluting and over sized. It's a truly ridiculous situation. We need to get people in a mindset where cheap adequate cars are fine and a fancy watch is your badge of wealth and status symbol, it all started to go horribly wrong when the motorcar took over that role. Far less bad for congestion and the environment...

In reply to wintertree:

I think you must drive on different roads to me and I live in one of the most Barber jacket/Hunter wellies areas of the country. Yes, there are people in massive Range Rovers etc, but most people are driving small family hatchbacks. I guess a small family hatchback, or even an estate could be considered overpowered and too big unless you have, I don't know, a family.

Yours,
Owner of a Ford Focus 1.8 TDCi, 100'000+ miles and 10 years old, living 5 miles on dark rural roads from the nearest station, 20 miles from work and in a village with about 4 buses a day to nowhere I need to go. I guess I could push my son the 17 miles to his nursery in his pushchair, or get one of those bike seats and add panniers to carry all his and my stuff every morning.

Or I could move back into the town near work that I was born in but moved out of because I couldn't afford a house there.

In much of the country, cars are an essential item.

In reply to XXXX:


Same around here, but most of them are still very over powered. Most will top out over 100mph and most will hold 5 people. Yet most of the time those cars commute 5-10 miles with one person in and never go over 50mph, which needs 25% of the power of the car if it can sustain 100.

The problem is people spec their car not to their regular use case, but their extremal case. A large majority of the cars are oversized and overpowered for the large majority of the miles they do.

If we could get a two seater inline car with reduced parking requirements and better mileage we would in an instant. Less cost to make or own, half the size on the road. I imagine this would suit an awful lot of other people as well who currently have a 4 or 5 seater car. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Lit Motors C1 actually happens...


Nothing short of a combined set of radical changes in mentality and technology is going to alter this.

In reply to wintertree:

Is that called a motorbike?

In reply to wintertree:
Yet most of the time those cars commute 5-10 miles with one person in and never go over 50mph,

Yet more of the UKC sweeping generalisations that we know and love

In reply to Timarzi:

Does a motorbike transport two people in smart work clothes keeping them separate from the weather with space for groceries whilst keeping them safe with side impact systems, airbags and crumple zones?

No, it does not.

I've had a motorbike. To small, to at risk of other people's mistakes, and not compatible with smart work clothes. I've had a car, to big, to inefficient, to hard to find parking for, to expensive to run.

I'd like to think there's a middle ground...

In reply to Ava Adore:



You call it "sweeping generalisations". I call it "evidence based FACT".

Consider this report - https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/2...

Consider the figure in section 9, "Vehicles". Commuting mileage, average per car, across all 4 wheeled cars in the UK is ~2,800 miles per year. Let's take a reasonable estimate of 47 working weeks, 5 days per week, 2 journeys per day, a total of 470 journeys. 2800/470 = 5.96 miles per journey.

On average people commute 6 miles by car. Unless they live at one motorway slip road and work at the next, I seriously doubt the average speed is over 50mph.

The evidence for car occupancy is similarly damming, at 1.2x for commutes.

So, taking the facts the average commute is 6 miles with an occupancy of 1.2 people in a 4 door car that will seat either 5 or 6 people. So I stand by my "sweeping generalisation". There is some leeway between interpreting my comment of "most of the time" and the average figures underpinning the actual evidence I have now looked up.

However, clearly, on average there is a massive, gigantic, phenomenal mismatch between the power, size and cost of cars used for commuting and that which is actually needed. These cars that are the first or second most expensive thing most people will buy spend 90% of their time sitting idle and depreciating and spend most of the rest of their time being used at 25% of their capacity on very sort journeys.

Clearly there is a large dispersion from this embarrassing average for individuals - and for every person who is doing better, recall that someone else must be doing worse.

I am not saying that people don't need cars, but that the current situation is pretty bonkers and can and should be addressed. Population density is going inexorably up in the UK, so from a parking logistics viewpoint lots of smaller "commute sized" vehicles would help. Likewise it helps from an environmental viewpoint. Suggesting this is not an attack on car owning (which you seem to be taking it as) but a suggestion that perhaps, just perhaps, a radical reshake of the car culture in the UK could increase the utility of the motor vehicle whilst reducing cost to users.

In reply to wintertree:

I'm not sure whether to be impressed that you've done so much research to back up a statement on an internet forum or whether to shake my head sadly . But either way, kudos. I accept it's not a sweeping generalisation

In reply to wintertree:


Right. Because it's really convenient, when you find yourself in an 'extremal' situation, to magic up the appropriate car for the circumstances.

Still, I have the solution as it happens. I have a tiny Ford Ka for nipping down to the shops or taking my son to the school bus 8 miles away, an old Discovery for dealing with the extremal snow, towing, and taking a ton of stuff on holiday and a rather nice Audi to compensate for my inadequacies (you'll know the sort).

Is that the solution you had in mind? I can just imagine how convenient that would be in suburban Bristol.

In reply to wintertree:

We have two cars for two people (and a one year old). My commute has 1 person for 3 days a week or 2 people 2 days a week as I drop my son off at nursery on the way. The other car has one person 5 days a week. So on average, 1.2 which is average according to your statistics.

Yet, we need two cars because my wife and I work in different places and it's impossible to get there any other way because of a lack of public transport. We need a medium sized family hatchback because we have a family. At the weekends, we need the space to accommodate two adults, a car seat and all of the associated paraphenalia. I imagine other families have the same situation, even more so when they have more than one child.

The car is used at the weekends, that's every week, not 'extremal cases' for what it is designed for. Should people then go and buy another car for their every day commute to then depreciate when they aren't using it at weekends? It's a ridiculous assertion. I've tried lift-sharing in every job I've had and invariably it isn't possible when work is flexible in timing and location and you have other responsibilities outside work.

So why shouldn't people buy vehicles based on the 'extreme' case? Surely to do otherwise would be ridiculous as then it wouldn't actually be any use to you. Think of it the other way, cars which are fully utilised two days a week, are then used for commuting the rest of the week, maximising the use of an asset that would otherwise be underused.

You're either trolling or genuinely blinkered.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I did say it was a *problem* that people own the car that meets their extremal needs, not that they shouldn't, so why contribute complaining to this?


Obviously not because that contrite example you squeezed out is beyond stupid. For my extremal needs, rather than magic I do something so obvious perhaps it didn't occur to you. I rent a bigger car or a van. Granted, this does't cover snow, but to be honest having a 4x4 around here just means you can get out of the drive in winter and get stuck in the horrendous traffic caused by other people being 100% inept at driving in snow. Also for most people, having their tyres changed to winter ones is going to as much as having a 4x4.

There isn't "a solution" - as I said before it needs a radical rethink. Parts of the solution:

1) Small, cheap, safe, affordable, enclosed two seat inline vehicles for committing, nipping to the shops, some school runs
2) More "on demand" shared ownership schemes. These can really take off once we have self driving cars (beginning to be a reality now in the USA) - as they can then appear where and when they are needed, which will make them suitable for country living as well as cities. It will also allow parking to be "out sourced" from where people work to out of town maintenance/charging locations.
3) All wheel drive becoming standard - this deals with the snow extremal car situation, and could well become the standard on electric cars in 10-15 years time. Much simpler to add than to an ICE car, improves economy as it turns out as well.
4) A resurgence of fine automatic mechanical watches as a status symbol. (Okay, this is a joke but there clearly is a large status aspect to cars for many people.)
5) A fit for purpose public transport network. Oh how they laughed...

In reply to XXXX:


Neither. I'm just trying to get people to think outside the box. So it doesn't suit your use case, your lifestyle, your family unit. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea for other people. If it suits 20% of the people out there, that's 20% who can invest less money in deprecating motor vehicles, who can reduce their parking footprint, their energy usage.

As it happens in your use case, would you not be equally well suited by one estate car and one of these - http://litmotors.com/c1/ - if they become real? Now you have replaced a car with something with half the capital cost (okay it'd be a decade for that to trickle down to misers like me who buy old cars, but we're talking about long term change) and you'd have saved half a parking place at one of the commute destinations. The running and maintenance costs are lower, the capital cost is lower, there's more parking at work, there's less parking pressure at home - everyone wins. Perhaps there is more and it's not right for you, but it is for others.

Should we not look for alternatives to the current status quo? Nobody is happy with the cost of motoring, many people find parking at home or work a source of stress, why should we not consider how this can be made better?

Sorry, I forgot, this is UKC and is increasingly luddite central.

In reply to Ava Adore:


I am apparently often quite guilty of sweeping generalisations mind you, but thanks

In reply to XXXX:


Because the extreme case happens very rarely. People occasionally move house, it doesn't mean we should all buy a large truck.

In reply to wintertree:

Being serious for a moment, I agree with the basic point you are trying to make but you need to understand that not everyone lives in cities and some people's lives are a lot more complicated than yours seems to be. Hydrogen fuel cells are the only way to go and for out of town use batteries are always going to be a waste of time and people will hate them.

And you need to switch off your predictive spell-checking. Mine was far from a contrite example, and I suspect you'd need to be quite flexible to commit in an inline two-seater!

In reply to Dave Garnett:


Thanks, I'm glad someone does


I did make a nod to that - the suggesting that self driving cars will open open shared ownership schemes to people outside of cities. I'd love to use something like Zip Car, but we're well below the critical density needed to make it useful to us, however if I could order it on my phone and have it turn up by itself... Bam, I'm in.

Also, the biggest problems with pollution and congestion are in the cities, and an ever larger fraction of the population lives in the cities, so they would seem to be a logical first place to think about when it comes to addressing the problems? After all, this is a thread about parking in a city, not in some upland dales village... As are all the parking threads...


I don't disagree. As I said elsewhere, that's no reason not to look for solutions for other people? Any innovation that helps people in a simpler situation will offer additional possibilities to people with more complicated transport logistics in their life. If we don't try and change things, things won't change.


Hydrogen is not without its own complexities and costs and problems. The battery problem becomes less serious with self driving cars - they drop you off at work and go away and charge themselves up. Tesla have shown you can change a 340 mile range battery in less time than it takes to fill a tank of petrol, and we are in very early days for mass production electric cars. Also, one day one of the many research technologies will break out of the lab and give us a 1,000 mile battery. Please? Pretty please?

Self driving cars, widespread electric cars, these things are becoming reality. It may well be 20 years before it's commonplace, but it'd be nice if people could at least think about it now. It might just start influencing some people's decisions and choices in the right direction.


Crickey. I wish I could switch on better proof reading.

In reply to wintertree:

I ride a motorbike to work, it has a large fairing, a leg cover, handle bar muffs, heated grips. I wear good clothing and don't ride like an idiot. I think the benefits far outweigh the risks (costs/speed/convenience/green footprint)

That Lit motor doesn't look a lot safer to me, but I bet it costs a lot more.

I thought us climbers were meant to take a few risks....motorbikes are a brilliant solution, people are scared of them because they are basically wimps. Too cold, too wet? I would go as far as saying that cycling is more dangerous than a motorbike, far less protection and just as exposed to other cars...yet we have a cycling revolution on our hands.

The solution is already here. People just need to man up and get on their motorbike/scooter

In reply to wintertree:

[...] Parts of the solution:

[...]


[...]

Trouble is everyone is going to demand one to get themselves to the office for 8.30.

In reply to 999thAndy:


Well, not everyone. It'd be a near ideal match for shift work; three 8 hours shifts, all commutes with one shared vehicle.

But yes, the concentration of traffic in rush hours is a problem. People have been trying to fix it for a long time without much obvious success.

As it happens, I think an intelligent car sharing system could integrate with lift sharing - if it's all self driven cars then one could imagine it adapting a lot more flexibly than conventional lift sharing arrangements. Raising the average commute occupancy from 1.2 to 2 would have a monumental effect on congestion, parking, pollution and capital costs. I think the self driving part and the backend scheduling systems now being developed could finally make this real.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


Their goal is £12,000; so quite a bit more than a cheap new car. Still, it's early days for them and the car is well established. Now, 20 years down the line.... It's supposed to survive being sideswiped without falling over using the gyros, and to have a protective cage and airbags. No footage of it happening with a realistic impact yet, only with it being dragged from a low attachment point.


I used to. Then I moved North! More seriously, as with cycling, the traffic density reaches a point where it just becomes a dangerous chore. There's a chicken/egg problem there, as if enough people switched there wouldn't be so much traffic. There is a lot employers could do to help people motorbike; I know people who want to but who have no secure place to store their helmet or change of clothes etc.

In reply to wintertree:

I don't think only 20% of people have families. A big car is needed at the weekends and evenings, it makes no sense to buy another one for the commute.

The report you offer as evidence makes no comment on your assertion that people are driving bigger cars than they need.

And no, an expensive death trap is not what we need on dimly lit rural roads strewn with potholes, rampaging deer, suicidal pheasants and wet leaves. Nor is it suitable for high speed driving on some of the most dangerous roads in the country with dual carriage way cross overs. Thanks, our little fiesta will do just fine.

In reply to XXXX:


It took me literally ten seconds to find - via google - another government report that shows average occupancy for commutes in 4 wheeled cars (that vast majority of which seat 4+ people) is 1.2. It also lists the average occupancy across all journeys as 1.6. - http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statis...

So, on average, 32% of the seating capacity of cars is unused. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. So on average the UK fleet is 3x as large/expensive/inefficient/requiring of parking than it needs to be. Why is this such a contentious fact? Why is there such resistance to any interest in exploring ways this obvious, expensive inefficiency might be addressed? So it's not for you. So you have decided that there is no way any of the changes we may face could help cut your cost of motoring (against ever rising fuel costs) because you are already using the perfect system for you. Great, lucky you. Let's not think about what might make it better for anyone else.

It's the UKC luddite tendency.

In reply to wintertree:

What is the average occupancy excluding commuting?

Will you not accept that although most journeys have underoccupancy, that those cars are used to their designed capacity at least once per week, and that therefore, they are not inefficient at all.

I would very much like to cut my transport costs, but there is no alternative at present. What's with the constant luddite accusations? Is it word of the day on your screensaver?

Anyway, I resolved not to argue on the internet any more and I've made my point, whether or not you choose to accept it.

In reply to XXXX:


Good for you. I would do the same but it is jolly good fun!

In reply to XXXX:


But they are, and you say as much. They are inefficient when they are empty. They are not efficient when underoccupied. Yes, some people need the full capacity on a regular basis, and at the moment owning that capacity car is the best solution for most of those people. Silly me for thinking we may be able to improve on this.


So you have no alternative, so nobody else can? And I can't look to the future?


My sentiment exactly.

In reply to mypyrex:

Apologies if you answered this already - I haven't trawled through the row going on to check...

Have you consulted with the residents who live on the road in question? I would have thought they should be the ones with the most clout.
There was a plan a few years ago to bring in parking restrictions on the road I live on, which is in the same situation as yours. I along with several others objected. The main reason being that parked cars act as effective traffic calming. The last thing we want is to speed up traffic outside our houses!

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


Been there, done that, got the shattered wrists, collarbone, flail chest....

In reply to Hooo:
>Have you consulted with the residents who live on the road in question? I would have thought they should be the ones with the most clout.

Do planning officers (not councillors, I get them) really take local views more into account than anyone else's, or are they swayed by the most rational argument, based on a set of generally applicable criteria (whatever these may be). Locals, being the ones most affected by a scheme, are likely to take a selfish view, and not one that takes the wider view, with impacts on everyone else given due consideration.

"No I don't want those wind turbines/drug rehabilitation centres/ relief roads etc near my front door" .

Righto, let's put them somewhere else!

In reply to mbh:

That's a good point, but in every situation the impact on the locals has to be weighed against the benefit to everyone. In the examples you quote, there is a very small impact compared to the wider benefit. At a previous address I received a letter because the previous tenants had objected to a drug rehab centre in our street. I took great pleasure in writing back to say that the objection no longer stood as I was the new resident and I had no objections. I can't be doing with NIMBYs.
In making a small residential road easier for traffic, the impact is high but the benefit is tiny - cutting a minute or less off journey times. The benefit won't last either - as soon as people realise the road is a good route, traffic will increase until a new bottleneck appears somewhere else.
A new bypass has recently opened round my town, so they have light up signs saying that there are severe delays in town. There aren't, but it's the only way to persuade people to change their habits and use a different route. In my opinion we should be making driving through residential areas so crap that you'd only do it if you have to. It's the only way to get people to change their habits.

In reply to mbh:



It would be Highways Officers, not planners. They will take a more rational view, but things definately won't happen if there isn't strong local support. Someone mentioned parking schemes (resident only type stuff), by law these need a majority in favour on a high turn out. If Councillors really want something they can push it through against officer advice, unless it is illegal.