About
Mission
We wish to be able to enjoy the full width of the pavement. We are happy for others to ‘enjoyed the freedom of the car’ only if they can arrange for somewhere to park it safely and off the pavement.
We aim to peacefully and creatively build visibility for the issue to the point where the authorities are obliged to act effectively and create simple, clear and easily enforced legislation that makes it illegal to park wholly or partially on pavements everywhere and then enforce it.
This won’t be achieved immediately. We will need car clubs in every urban area reducing the need for people to own so many cars. We need to reduce the speed to 20mph speed limits on many residential roads and get more people onto bicycles and off the pavement. Cycle hire schemes are wildly successful in many capital cities at present including Paris and London and need to be encouraged.
We need to create a vision of how all out lives will be improved by not messing up our neighbourhoods for each other. We need to get a lot of people demanding change. We will need re-invent our streets again as places to meet people and for children to play. Some cities are trialing car-free days where major routes are closed to traffic each year allowing people to briefly experience the freedom. Times Square in New York is now free of motorised traffic. Paris, New York, London and an Autobaun in German have all had car-free days.
How can we achieve that?
Our main role is to encourage and support individuals and groups around the country to engage with the issue and to do Something. We will listen out for what people are doing, we will also experiment with our own ideas and will pass on what works.
We must keep it fun, engaging and light. Emma Goldman, the Russian activist was spot on when she said: ‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution’. For sure, some situations do need to be challenged, however everyone should be ready to lighten it up, respond calmly, explain politely and if necessary leave. It will not be helpful to get angry or cause damage to anyone’s property however badly behaved the owners are!
To be absolutely clear, we do not endorse anyone causing permanent damage to vehicles or to anything else.
We have parliament on our side! Parliament passed a law in 1974 that create the necessary powers but then failed to ensure that it was enabled and spent the next 35 years giving reasons why they hadn’t done so.
In 2006 the transport select committee said “We accept that the problem of vehicles obstructing footpaths country-wide is a large one and a major effort would be required to enforce the law. But the ‘do- nothing’ response of the Department is no longer a credible option.”
We need to encourage them to try and again and follow it through this time. May it will be 3rd time lucky.
Why Pedestrian Liberation?
Because much of our modern urban environment was created by car drivers with a primary aim of accommodating the needs of the car drivers and his vehicle ahead of the needs of the pedestrian. That is now changing slowly but the car driver is still the dominant force and politicians know it or we wouldn’t have a government pledging to ‘end the war on the motorist’.
Many laws are still skewed in favour of motorists, if a cars parks on the pavement and a pedestrian squeezes past, then it is the pedestrian who will be in trouble for causing criminal damage if they leave any mark on the vehicle. New legislation coming in will soon make it illegal to clamp a car parked on your property – if you don’t want people parking on your land then you will need to put up a fence. When cars travel too fast it is pedestrians that get hurt. If a child behaves childishly and steps into the street it is them rather than the driver of the car that hits them who gets the blame. Speed cameras are painted yellow to be ‘fair’ on motorists.
And then of course, if pedestrians don’t keep quite and ‘behave’ and start challenging drivers and authorities in relation to speeding or parking they are met too often with incredulity, challenges such as ‘whats it got to do with you’, or worse. No single incident has exposed the ‘oppression’ of pedestrians more clearly that the case of the blind man in Wales being arrested and locked in minutes after threatening to let down the tyres of a car that had been blocking the pavement for hours despite many phone calls to the police previously asking for them to be moved. This is a perfect example of this Alice-in-Wonderland upside-down world that we currently all live in.
If we want anything to happen then we are going to have to create a huge social movement challenging this situation, which is, of couse absurd and unjust. We will be successful sooner than we think!
History
Pedestrian Liberation was started in June 2010 in Ipswich, Suffolk. We started it because of the appalling level of pavement parking in the town.
As you say yourself you got not powers whatsoever because of argumentative people like you the world is in the state that it is,if you want a world where people tell other people what to do with their lives and create animosity like you guys are doing right now be my guest and create anarchy.We are meant to live in a tolerant society respecting each other but beacause the so called pedestrian liberation think that they have special treatments they like forcing themselves on to others.
We dont need sites like this!
shame on you!
An interesting perspective! Clearly this motorist does not recognise that their decision to park on the pavement is also ‘telling people what to do’ by making it impossible for pedestrians with buggies or wheelchairs to walk down the pavement and creating animosity. For sure they would like a society which is ‘tolerant’ of their behaviour, however the claim that we in PL are ‘creating anarchy’ doesn’t really stand up given that anarchy is defined as the ‘absence of publicly recognized government or enforced political authority’ which is exactly what we have now and are objecting to. We are actually asking for less anarchy not more!
I am a law abiding citizen and a good person. I have to park my car there because I couldn’t afford a house with off street parking and have to own a car. I agree this is not an ideal situation and the most extreme cases on this website certainly are not acceptable. However, what also isn’t acceptable is the constant leafleting (which is illegal if it causes a distraction/obstruction, isn’t handed directly to the recipient (ergo may fall to the ground) and the handling of someone else’s private property on more than one occasion within 24 hours – which is unreasonable.
I know you’ve got your own agenda, but bullying the “minority motorist” is not the way to go about it. Patronising chalk doodles and notes under the windscreen wiper blades is not going to make people change their ways. It’s just a confrontational approach which is going to alienate people who otherwise might be completely reasonable had you approached the matter in a less petty and passive aggressive fashion.
Have you ever considered that the reason why councils don’t act against it is because there isn’t another option? Your gallery of offenders are clearly the worst examples, which I’ve stated, aren’t acceptable, yet you’ve also victimising those who often have no choice either.
You are not law abiding, you are breaking the law every time you park on the pavement. You do not HAVE to do any of the things you say, you do not HAVE to have a car, you choose to have and to do these things. Basically, you are a selfish person, by accommodating your own needs to the exclusion of anyone else’s needs you are saying that you are more important than they are.
I feel victimised when I have to walk in the road with my child because there is too little room on the pavement. Because car drivers have a vehicle they often seem to think that in itself means they should have priority over public space. To me it seems drivers already have the best bit of the public highways (the middle, the best drained, best maintained, flattest bit, with the best view) and the rest of us are literally marginalised, so to be forced to give up a chunk of our margin for a parked vehicle is quite oppressive.
Thanks for your comment. I certainly understand you position which is of course why this blog exists. It is interesting to read you view next to the one above where the person starts ‘I am a good person’ and then goes on to explain why that have to park on the pavement. None of this is easy, but that is no reason to the authorities to ignore the problem and leave pedestrians to make do with whatever space drivers choose to leave them. Do write to your council and to your MP and let them know what you think. Do check the Law section of this blog and if people are actually breaking some law then report them. Good luck and don’t give up.
This site seems to be obsessed with motor vehicles. The biggest danger to pedestrians is cyclists on the footway & on the carriageway made even worse by ‘Boris Bikes’ which travel in packs & Stage Carriages (Pedicabs). Cyclists do not care for their own safety as seen by the fact that the majority of cyclists have no lights at night, & so cannot be expected to care for anyone else’s. There urgently needs to be a lobby group representing pedestrians without other conflicting interests. Every London Borough has a cycling officer some of which meets the cycling lobby as much as 4 times a year. Adding to the universal Institutional Pedestrianism affecting pedestrian safety.
representing pedestrians with out other conflicting aims. Every borough in London has acylcingerepresenting epresentng
I have tried to focus on the issues that concern pedestrians with a focus on my own personal experience. For sure cyclists do cause some issues for pedestrians, both when cycling on the pavement and when failing to stop for pedestrian crossings. I haven’t noticed it as a big issue at all in my home town though where many people complain about cars and bins and other clutter and very few complain about bicycles.