Any urban council these days has a real problem with car parking. Many older streets were never built for cars and barely have one place on the road per house. Modern conversions of houses to multiple flats exacerbates this problem no end. Every resident assumes an automatic right to park his/her car outside their house. We can use residents parking schemes to avoid issues with outsiders taking up parking places but if there is not enough road space for all the required cars, somebody will get upset when they cannot find a space for their car.

On new developments we can make better rules but if this is done without thought we still end up in a mess as we have done on the Kennet Island development. Everyone selling the houses there knew that there were limited spaces available for parking cars. Everyone buying a house there should have been informed. That has not stopped new residents getting angry and upset when told that there is no room for the second car even if both partners sharing a house need them to get to work.

There is no easy answer, to build new housing with 2, 3 or 4 car parking spaces will require vast more new tracts of land to be made available (and consequently less green and pleasant land to live in) or for developers to build less houses per hectare. We already have a chronic shortage of affordable housing in Reading and across South East England. 

There is no answer without a modal shift to alternative forms of transport. We need to wean residents away from 100% dependence on cars to buses, trains, bikes and even (shock, horror) walking. We could add car clubs which provide cars on demand for their members for occasional trips.

We all know what needs to be done to get away from car dependence but often lack the will to do it. Public policy should aim to make alternative modes of tarnsport as appealing as possible. We do have a great bus service in Reading, we are making a start on implementing safe routes for bikes, we want more children to walk to school and not have mums clog up the roads with very short school run trips.

The reality is that we are going to have to suffer a great deal of collective pain on this subject over the next decade or two until we finally convince ourselves that there are alternatives to the car and that we have no automatic right to a parking place in the road outside our front door.