Proposed Pavement Ban Could Be Bad News For Bikers

Banning pavement parking has been on the agenda for some time now, although now Councillor Darren Rodwell, transport spokesperson for the Local Government Association (LGA) wants to push through a ban on it altogether.

Pavement parking in some parts of the UK is already banned (London and Scotland), although for the rest of the UK, the rules around it can be hit and miss, and generally it’s not always immediately clear whether it is allowed or not. Mr Rodwell wants to make the rules around it more clear-cut, saying that vehicles (both cars and bikes) parked on the pavement are one of the biggest complaints from pedestrians.

What he is pushing for is to give local authorities more power to use Traffic Restriction Orders (TROs) to ban the practice in problem areas or even an entire authority. Another option Mr Rodwell would like to see is to give traffic wardens more powers to issue penalty charge notices for parking on the pavement. His final, and most hard-hitting, idea is to give councils and local authorities the power to ban pavement parking altogether.

It is a frustrating situation, and I can’t count the number of times while out pushing my daughter in her buggy, I’d have to deviate into the road to avoid a carelessly parked car. But the one-size-fits-all option of banning the practice for all vehicles does seem a little unkind to bikers, whose vehicles generally, if parked responsibly, take up much less space than a chonking great 4x4.

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