What value should we put on street space?

It costs a little over £1,500 per year to rent 17 cubic metres (600 cubic feet) of storage space in Greater London. Alternatively, you could spend £400 on an old caravan, pack it full of stuff and park it on the road outside your house without any further expense.

Lots of folk would object to having residential streets lined with caravans full of junk, but is it any different from the way they’re currently being used as subsidised car parks?

Given that people in cities suffer so badly from the health effects of air pollution, and bearing in mind that in the case of London more than half don’t even have access to a car themselves, shouldn’t we become more creative – not to mention equitable – in the way we allocate street space?

Let’s reclaim our streets

Architects have proposed houses that each occupy the footprint of a car parking space. If the concept of replacing car parking spaces with homes is too far fetched, how about more parklets?

Parklets are temporary spaces that replace a car parking space and offer a community space for everyone to enjoy

Studies have shown that restaurants and bars can see see their turnover boosted by up to 30 per cent after installing a parklet. Not only that, but per square metre, cycle parking delivers 5 times higher retail spend than the same area of car parking.

Local councils are slowly beginning to acknowledge the social as well as commercial value of re-purposing street space, but it’s a change being driven by dynamic individuals such as Brenda Puech, who has single-handedly helped transform her area of London by turning parking bays into parklets.

Hackney Council forced Brenda to dismantle her first parklet, but such was the positive reaction to the installation from locals that they not only agreed to a meeting with her, but subsequently launched a parklet building programme of their own.

You can watch a full version of our interview with Brenda in our documentary about road danger.

Storage wars – who owns our streets?

For many decades, streets have been used as a free (or heavily subsidised) way to store private cars. We’ve forgotten that streets belong to us all. The fact that the use of street space is a financial free for all has led some to play on the storage caravan idea to sublet their cars.

The example above is in America, but it illustrates how enterprising folk can turn the undervaluing of street space to their advantage. Nearer to home, the example below shows the extent to which we subsidise the storing of private vehicle in public space.

The issue of parking here in the UK is so politically toxic that despite increasingly congested streets, we’re unlikely to see a solution as radical as the measures adopted in Japan. The law there requires motorists to prove they have access to a local parking space. To register a car, or when changing address, motorists need to obtain a parking space or garage certificate from local police.

With the exception, of ‘kei’ cars (tiny city cars similar to the two-seater Smart car available in Britain), if you don’t have access to a  parking space or garage of your own, you’re unable to register a car. To reinforce this legislation, overnight on-street parking is outlawed in many areas. Metered car parking spaces may be free to use in the evening, but at 3am any cars that remain are towed away by police.

The ethical choice

The ETA was established in 1990 as an ethical provider of green, reliable travel services. Over 30 years on, we continue to offer cycle insurance , breakdown cover and mobility scooter insurance while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all we do.

The Good Shopping Guide judges us to be the UK’s most ethical provider.