Eco Friendly House And Garden

Could your local shops be suffering due to your bad parking?

If you think about it honestly – do you regularly visit shops that don’t have easy parking close by when you are driving home from work or when dropping off the kids at school?

Would you really say to me that you would be happy to park 15 minutes walk away from a shop to just grab some milk?  Or would you infact make sure you drove to a shop that you knew had spaces right outside – even if it was a bit further away.

Especially if it was raining…..

Or you were in a hurry……

So now, let’s look at this the other way around, and think about why you avoid certain stores due to bad parking and how this can be improved.

Parking Bays:
Many stores have head on parking bays drawn on the road outside the shopfront – mainly because they want all their customers to have a space without a fuss.

However, some people who are ‘in a hurry’ or just a bit lazy – park across more than 1 bay limiting the number of other customers who can visit the store.

Other people might see that space as a good place to park while they go visit their friends – and have no intention of using the store at all.  This is even worse than the first example – as at least they were only blocking 2 spaces while they were grabbing some bread or whatever – but these people could block up that space for hours!

Now if you were on your way home and this store rarely ever had a spaces outside – you aren’t going to shop there are you?  You will plan to visit another store, as no doubt will plenty of other commuters who that store depends on for trade.

photo credit: the spectre los

Your Local Stores:
Now this might not be a local store to you – but consider how you can prevent your local stores from suffering the same fate by planning your parking in advance!

For example – not parking in a busy spot outside stores to go visit your friends or go shopping elsewhere for hours would be a good start!

And if you live in the area – you will know when it’s busy – so avoid those times if you can.  Not only will it mean that you won’t get stuck in a crowd and have to queue for things – it also frees up that busy time for the commuters who don’t have much time to do their business.

It’s exactly the same principle as not going to the bank during other people’s lunch hour if you don’t work yourself!  They only have a hour to get things done – so the last thing they need in front of them are 5 people who could have come here at any time they wanted – but are now making them miss their entire lunch break standing in a queue!

And when parking in unmarked bays, make sure that you park up to the edges so that the most number of cars can fit in around you.  You must have seen cars parked about a metre away from the edge of the bay – wasting that space completely for other drivers!

There are a myriad of ways that your parking habits could prevent other people from doing their day to day activities – or their one-off trip to town.  And if they can never find a parking space when they come to visit your local area – they may well go find somewhere else to spend their money instead.

And your local stores will find it harder and harder to turn a profit.

That quick drive to the store before dinner could cost you your open spaces!

I’m not talking about the cost of car pollution on the environment – although that is becoming a major problem. And I’m not talking about the amount of front yards and gardens being concreted over for parking spaces – although this is seriously affecting natural water cycles and causing localised flooding.

What I’m talking about is your single little car on your ‘quick drive to the stores’ being one of 30 other little cars on a quick drive to the store.

How Can 1 Little Car Cause A Problem?
Well, imagine only the people that 100% need to be on the roads at rush hour were on the roads.  People going to work, emergency services and buses are who I mean here – and they all know where they are going.  As a result of their A – B actions, they may well run smoothly with no snarl-ups – I mean traffic lights and roundabouts are designed to keep traffic flowing to avoid congestion.

Now, add dithering drivers to the mix.  They either drive too slow, can’t decide which lane they should be in, are too busy fiddling with something on the passenger seat to watch the lights or are not in a hurry at all so make bad driving choices.

All these people are responsible for causing traffic delays – and these traffic delays get noticed by the residents and they want the traffic sorted out.  This can involve a whole host of changes.

Who Decides?
If residents get annoyed about traffic issues, councils want to implement more traffic regulations and traffic lights to control the flow.  They want to ‘improve’ the roundabouts and dual carriageways – which all make it more difficult for pedestrians to get around – what with all the railings and extra lanes to navigate.

The worst case scenario here is unfortunately the best alternative to traffic in towns – and that is to build a by-pass!  Heavy machinery is used here to plough out fields and woodlands to make way for a super-fast easy-to-drive-on dual carriageway!

I know that this won’t happen overnight – but it could already be happening.  Has your town got any roadworks going on?  Any ‘highway’ improvements at the moment?  Do you already have speeding cars and multiple junctions?

If you keep driving in rush hour or when you really don’t need to – you are causing some of these problems.  And there is a simple way to slow this development down – and it involves forward planning, buses, trains, bikes and your very own little feet!