Privatising the highway

I recently  blogged about how the Traffic Management Act 2004 had introduced new regulations to protect dropped kerbs where people cross the road from being obstructed by parked cars.

I commented at the end of the post that this legislation also unfortunately allowed home-owners to ‘privatise’ the highway outside their house as long as they installed a dropped kerb and dug up their front garden! What I have now noticed is what happens when lots of people do the same. In this first photo, which is not untypical of streets around where I live, there is a continuous 44 meter section of ‘privatised kerb’ where no-one is allowed to park without the permission of one of the owners.

44 Meters of dropped kerb with automatic parking restrictions

On this nearby street there are 150 meters of almost continuous dropped kerb on one side and nearly as much on the other.

Dropped kerbs along almost the whole street, both sides

In case you don’t get the message immediately, one can of course put up a ‘private’ sign. To be fair I don’t know if they are referring to their driveway or the highway in this case.

Private!

This of course creates even more pressure on the pavements which don’t have dropped kerbs especially by larger vehicles as in my recent post about this van which was parked across the pavement outside a recreation ground which of course has no need for dropped kerbs!

A van parked inconveniently on a section of pavement without any dropped kerbs