January 05, 2017
Parking has recently hit the headlines again with a number of issues. It started with The NCP, UK’s largest parking provider, who reported on the BBC website that parking bays needed to be widened for bigger cars.
They also told The Times that they planned to widen parking bays "wherever possible” to meet the growing size of family cars and 4x4s. UK standard parking spaces are still 15.7ft (4.8m) in length, by 7.8ft (2.4m) in width despite the fact many cars such as BMW X5, Land Rover Discover and Audi Q7 are now longer than 4.8m
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg it seems with regards to parking issues.
Courtesy car providers, Accident Exchange, estimate there had been a 35% rise in parking accidents since 2014 due to the success of SUV’s with more than 675,000 parking collisions now registered every year.
Sarah Lewis from the AA, told the BBC that over 90% of their members “feel that parking spaces are too small comparatively to the size of modern cars," and that "There is nothing more frustrating than coming back to your car and finding it has been damaged.". Family drivers too are not happy as without wider bays they struggle to get children in and out of their car seats. 
While the NCP admit that as a business there is an "extremely fine balance" between the demand for wider spaces and the need to maximise the number of spots. Many drivers in the interview stated they would happily pay extra for larger parking spaces; however drivers with smaller cars would not want to pay an unnecessary parking premium.
Some UK councils have also hit the headlines but for residential parking problems where more permits have been sold and issued than available spaces affecting many residents who often cannot park their cards near their homes.
The Echo spoke to a single mum and care worker, who said: "When I come home at 8pm at night after a long shift I dread it. Sometimes you just have to drive round and round looking for somewhere. I rarely can park anywhere near my house."
This particular council issues permits on a zone basis rather than on a street-by-street. It has been selling up to three permits per household and admits that it does not know how many spaces there are in any of the streets or zones.
The Echo paper, through the Freedom of Information Act obtained the number of permits issued street-by-street then a journalist counted the number of available designated residents' parking spaces on the various streets – click here for the results which show that nearly double the amount of parking permits were sold to actual available spaces.
Despite the fact the council makes it clear that a permit doesn't guarantee a place on your street they are now consulting with residents on “the potential to reduce the maximum number of permits per household from three to two.”
Parking costs are also hitting headlines with hourly parking in London costing more than the National Living Wage, parking spaces are clearly in demand and at an all time premium...so much so that businesses also suffer at the hands of parking problems.
ITV online recently reported that “Cardiff has been named as the worst place in Wales to park and the third worst in Britain......based on the number of parking tickets issued, the length of time spent looking for a space and the frequency that vehicles suffer parking-related damage”.
Norparc offers the perfect car parking counting solution for this providing efficient monitoring and parking management minimising congestion both within the parking facility and surrounding areas / roads.
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