Is it time to rethink housing estate design?
Is it time to rethink housing estate design?
More & more housing estates are leaving car owners struggling for spaces to park and making a potential roadblock for emergency services.
Each year more and more cars are sold, and the state of public transport in the town means that getting to and from work on our industrial estates is a chore – unless you drive.
The recent Clifton Cinema development proposal did not even have one parking space per apartment allocated.
What is parking like on your estate?
There should be a parking space per residence as a bare minimum
And unless there are designated parking areas for visitors, and for those households who’s kids have a vehicle.
One space per household is inadequate.
It definitely needs rethinking. Lawley was horrendous for parking. The random trees and bollards didn’t help. Really don’t miss it since moving and it would put me off new builds in future.
The older estates are no better! I’m a community nurse and trying to park on some of the streets on Hollinswood, Brookside, Sutton Hill and Woodside is a nightmare…sometimes I get blocked in or out and have to park elsewhere so god Knows how the emergency services (particularly fire engines) manage!
Parking on Lawley Farm is rubbish. Couldn’t even get into my own street a few nights back due to a car & a van parking (very badly) in areas that aren’t spaces!! In fairness it’s the first major problem I’ve had in the 7 years I have lived here. Cars couldn’t get in or out of the street for at least 45 minutes. Thankfully no one needed any emergency services at the time as the van owner took his time moving it even after being asked.
don’t people think about parking spaces when buying a house??
We are on a new estate Ketley have 2 each house apartment have there’s and spare ones. Yet still get idiots parking on the roads why as they have spaces it’s a road so we have to drive road his car really makes me mad.yet some estates like in hadley now over 10 yrs old is a nightmare but they don’t use spaces at the back because of thieves etc
Very lucky here.. New builds in malinslee, all end houses have a drive for 2 cars and the rest have 2 spaces just in front of other people’s Windows!
Parking is a important part of Which house you end up getting so 2 allocated parking would be good even if you had to pay extra to ensure there your spaces only , maybe house / flat number them .
All very well to encourage use of public transport and so on, however reality in Telford is the public transport system is very poor. I live within a few minutes walk from the train station and bus station and work a one of the towns larger employers. I cannot get closer than a 30 minute walk by either.
Might help if some actually use the drives they have to park in.
My house is 15 years old .. every house on our estate has parking for at least 2 cars.. makes me not want to move to a new build!
Building a house without a drive or parking is mental. End of! Also needs to be an acknowledgement of modern ownership of cars, with kids at home longer its now a minimum of two per house!
Fiona Mc Laughlin
maybe they should update the public transport in Telford it’s got to be the only place in the country you can’t get a bus to work ! when I worked at hortonwood it used to cost me £60 a week in taxis ,but chunk out of a minimum wage .
Double Garage with driveway for 4 cars
Lawley is awful , we said when they were being built there won’t be enough parking spaces
Developers need to have a social conscience and do a lot more to provide good places to live even if profits are down a little. If every fifth house sold on a development was profit then surely there is plenty of slack to increase house plot sizes and then parking. The estate I lived in in the UK had a covenant that each house had 2 off road parking places and that was built in the 1970’s.
Buy a bike?
Depends on the estate/plot. We have a new build with garage and driveway for at least 4 cars (have fitted upto 6 on it!) but neighbours with larger houses can only fit one car on their drive.
Serena Ryan some new houses dont even have a front garden anymore let alone parking spaces. We lucky on ours. Just a shame a few more havent done what you n John have done to minimise the amount of cars in the bloody way.
We looked at a lot of new housing estates when we were moving. I was shocked at how little parking there was for cars especially in lawley. 4 bed houses with 1 space is ridiculous. We bought a Redrow home in trench lock eventually which has good parking
The council need to give their planning officer a roasting – parts of lawley a disgrace – no parking and no paths disgusting
Squeeze as many properties in as they can for maximum profit.
Anyone can comment on any development application in regard to parking spaces but they never do. It’s all a bit late once they have been built.
There has been no sustainable transport planning in the housing developments in Telford – it was one of the few towns in the country without any bus service at all on boxing day! Wolverhampton is spending over £50 million on public transport ( metro link to the railway station/ enhanced bus services/completely new railway station etc) in the next 5 yrs and by the look of it Telford absolutely nothing!
Cars should be factored out of the immediate vicinity of houses bar for brief unloading periods. Imagine how relaxed Estates could be if the followed the Center Parcs route nd allocated a separate space for all cars to park together and drivers actually had to walk back to their houses! Plainly spaces would need to be nearer for Folks with accessibility issues. The cars should not dominate design for healthy living. Chances are anyhow that in 20 years we’ll all be utilised a car pool system to get around and all these paces will be planted up as vegetable plots…… here’s hoping!
Ridiculous. The problem is this obsession with the ‘shared space’ fad – although in limited situations it can work. How is works here is, the developers remove pavements, streets get narrower, more rabbit hutch-size houses can be crammed in and anyone such as those with impaired vision or mobility get chucked into the traffic to take their chances.
Then because street signs, barriers, yellow lines etc make the place look untidy, people can and do park all over the place at whatever angle they fancy.
It happened in Madeley, where eventually people protested enough to get a zebra crossing installed, which made life much safer for the elderly and others. However, the less robust surface on the “pavements” gets ruined by cars parking on it because they can.
Bah humbug!