Park life buy books to read, we buy pictures to beautify our living space, but we buy cars to park them on the street! I noticed, too, that often our urban streets are quite unkempt: lots of litter; blocked rainwater gullies; dirt and silt in the channels, and so on. But how do you clean up the mess with all those parked cars in the way? How many neighbour disputes exist because of parking in residential streets? How much time is spent by parking teams and patrolling staff trying to resolve these issues, devising, designing, and deploying residents parking schemes, which, if we are honest, are a compromise at best? Love grows Our parking community spends its time, day in, day out, dealing with the challenges presented, not just in residential streets, but in town centres, hospitals, universities, and just about anywhere where there isnt enough parking whatever that means. There are too many cars and there isnt enough space for them all. So, I contend that our love affair with the car, convenient as it is sometimes, is leading to Societys ills are all our fault, because the parking community tries to do the impossible and manage the streets fairly and responsibly for everyones benefit 48 all kinds of situations that would benefit from a change of heart. When civil parking enforcement started in 1994, there were 21.2 million cars registered; today its 35 million and rising. Thats an increase of more than 10 million cars, all of which must park somewhere most of the time. A quick calculation indicates that these additional vehicles would occupy an area roughly the size of Edinburgh. Our public perception research conducted in 2022* tells us that antisocial and inconsiderate parking are the two things most people are passionate about tackling. Inconsiderate parking includes obstructing pavements, blocking someones driveway, parking in designated bays they are not eligible to use, or taking up more than one space. Love hurts Yet societys ills are all our fault, because the parking community tries to do the impossible and manage the streets fairly and responsibly for everyones benefit. Civil enforcement officers are abused and parking operators are vilified for enforcement action that is deemed unfair. Parking charges and parking penalties are too high, say politicians. The BPA is passionate about these things, and we are doing all we can to help you manage parking, efficiently and effectively. We have developed Park Active as our contribution to encouraging active travel, encouraging better use of peripheral parking areas, enabling mobility hubs to encourage more people to walk a little bit further into town. We are delivering our frontline officer welfare programme to ensure that parking people can do their job without verbal or physical abuse. We continue to campaign for there to be respect for people delivering parking services and a reduction in abuse and malicious behaviour toward frontline parking professionals. With our Selfish Parking initiative, we are encouraging motorists to respect others, thinking before they park and not behaving selfishly. We are working in partnership with Living Streets, Disabled Motoring UK and Guide Dogs UK to campaign for better management of parking on the pavements. Change of heart But we just cant build our way out of congestion. Its been proven again and again, the world over. A switch to an EV fleet will not fix congestion either, we must reduce the demand for road traffic and travel too. Im reminded of Neil Sedaka who sang: Dont take your love away from me Dont you leave my heart in misery If you go, then Ill be blue Cause breaking up is hard to do. Its a tough time, but we must rethink our love affair with the car, for societys sake. *britishparking.co.uk/Research Kelvin Reynolds BPA chief technical services and governance officer kelvin.r@britishparking. co.uk