School parking

When I pick up my grandchildren at their village school, I park a little way away, to avoid the road outside which is a nightmare. The road I park on is residential, cottages one side, including the village shop, farmland opposite. The road is not yellow lined anywhere, it’s easily wide enough for cars to pass, and I’ve get to see more than one other car parked there.
One afternoon while I’m struggling with three children and a pushchair, a resident came out and asked me not to park there anymore, because people needed to be able to park for the village shop. Honestly, there wasn’t another car in sight, I did agree to park elsewhere in future, but it seemed so high handed. I park there for half an hour a week, now I have to try and squeeze into a space, where I can still open the back to get the stroller in, and get three children safely in, with cars buses and lorries inches away.

Same problem here but appealing to parents better nature is useless, they take no notice our school even brought in a traffic warden to patrol cars parked illegally/badly but as soon as he stopped we’re back to square one. I’ve seen parents square up to each other and that’s women as well as men. All reason goes out the window in the race to park.
I don’t know what the answer is.

There is meant to be no parking between 8a.m. and 9a.m. and between 3p.m. and 4p.m. in the road outside our primary school. Totally ignored by idle parents who can’t be bothered to park further away and do a bit of walking.
Threats of fines are never carried out, I think a few hefty fines would make a difference. The local PCSO is never around at these times, too busy having a coffee in the cafe further away or going into the local nursery school and chatting to classes of three year olds about goodness knows what!

Sara65 no-one has the right to ask people not to park on a public road where there are no parking restrictions. If it were me, I'm afraid I would have told her, with a smile, that as it's the safest place for you to park and manage 3 children into the car, you will continue to use that space for the very short time that you need each week.

Bathsheba
It was a retired’he’

I get your point, I’m not normally so passive, but didn’t want to make waves in the village where my daughter and grandchildren have to live.

I know a lot of you ladies have massive problems with school parking, I have had myself, which is why I try not to annoy anyone, personally, I think the schools should take some responsibility.

Good idea about residents parking outside their houses, school parents are a nightmare and have only one thought and that is for their little darling. Anyone else well.........

I do get irritated by the massive SUVs which straddle the white lines in the school car park thus taking up two spaces each. It means every alternate space is unusable for even the tiniest cars and we have to try and find spaces elsewhere. Not easy.
Silly thing it’s a large prosperous town on the outskirts of London, not a rural area where perhaps these huge vehicles make a bit more sense.

I worked near a school once, and one sports day, the parents parked all across our entrance and popped off for a couple of hours, when it was time for someone to leave, thy were completely blocked in, I rang the school, and told them to make an announcement to get the offending parents back to move their cars, what happened? You’ve probably guessed, nothing!

Yes parents on school run can’t be reasoned with nor it seems be dealt with officially!

I live close to a school

They ignore the double yellows and even the zig zags! They double park, they block driveways. The school put up notices, the council have notices and they ignore! The school started printing car registration numbers in the weekly newsletter - unlawful apparently! The ‘lollipop’ man tried to enforce parking restrictions and was promptly replaced! His replacement has been yelled at by patents!! It’s disgusting. Occasionally we get law enforcers come patrol but the come in hi vis jackets - all on best behavior THAT day! I asked why they didn’t come in civvies - “because we then can’t do anything about the parking”. Grrrr.

The funniest I witnessed was two women coming to blows because one had blocked another in and disappeared for a good 20 minutes - the irony was they were BOTH parked illegally, outside my house, on zig zags blocking MY drive. One asked me to act as a witness to what other had said ... yeah like that’s gonna happen. It is CRAZY. Never buy a house in a school road!!!!!

By the way less than 100 yards in any direction there are plenty of roads with parking- just in case anyone thinks these parents are just desperate. They are just LAZY ?

I lived in the country between two villages when my children were little. Far too far away from either to walk, and not far enough away for the school bus, so I had to drive them to school. The parking problems haven't changed, I used to park in the car park of the village hall, there was plenty of room but it was about a 6-10 minute walk. The number of parent s who tried to park near the school always amazed me. A few minutes walk is no problem, even in the rain!
When they went to secondary school I only picked them up in the afternoon if the weather was poor, they walked in the mornings. It was about a half hour walk.

I think things have become much worse, there have always been parking problems, I’ve never lived close enough to a school to walk, and some schools have had better solutions than others. But I would never have parked illegally. At one school, we had fifteen minutes to park on double yellow lines, I was delayed by a teacher once, and got a ticket.
Where my youngest went to school, they had a brilliant system of driving into the school, dropping the children at various pull in points, driving down to a roundabout, and on your way, but obviously that needs quite a lot of space.

It's a problem everywhere. I assume more and more are rushing to and from work and sometimes to pick up another child from childminders/other school too. Just my observations but also I've seen grandparents parking badly because keeping up safely with little ones is not so easy.

I remember hating the school walk because so often someone along our route was always in the progress of having building work on their home and it was yet another hazard during the walk with lively little ones.

I too have been that person struggling to get my small grandson safely into school where there was literally nowhere to park anywhere near the school and I had mobility problems and was due at work the other side of town almost the same time as school gates opened! I agree that some kind of pull in and drop off zone would be immensely helpful for lots of schools

People seem to lose all reason when it comes to picking up their little darlings from school.

God forbid they may have to walk a few steps.

I live near a senior school and the picker uppers are like maniacs!

I live about four doors away from a lower school and I've seen parents park outside my house 45 minutes before school finishes, just to be close to the school gates. What a waste of time. They could stay at home and walk to school in next to no time.

I can never fathom why parents are picking up teenagers 14/15 yr olds? What is wrong with letting them walk?

It's not a new problem but it seems to have got worse now that children don't always go to the school nearest their home. When DH was teaching he used to get annoyed because people who only lived a couple of minutes away insisted on driving their children to school. They could easily have walked - as DS and his friends did (with parental supevision), and they had a walk of about 25 minutes.

I agree with jenpax that a pull-in and drop-off zone is the way to go. I know it's not possible at many schools, but certainly something to consider for those that have the space, or whenever they have any building alterations. I worked for many years at an overseas primary school which had very little space for parking. No one was allowed to park, and this was enforced by the school (they had an elderly woman caretaker who put the fear of God into any parent that disregarded the rules!). They had a pull-in outside the main building where they had a number of staff on morning duty to usher the children out of the cars with their bags, and into school. It took seconds per car. This was even for the little reception children. They all managed to get into school and into their classrooms without any problem. Children do not need mummy or daddy to park up, walk to the school gates, have a natter for half a hour, whilst the kids run riot until the bell goes!

My father lives opposite a primary school and it's an absolute nightmare at drop off and pick up times! People constantly park in front of his driveway, and one mother once parked for 2 hours whilst she was helping out in class, whilst my car was parked on the drive ... this was when I was staying at my father's when he was in hospital ... and I missed most of visiting time! I did call the school, but they couldn't locate the mother, so I left a very blunt note on her car window! She did come to apologise, but that's really not the point. She shouldn't have assumed it was OK to block my father's drive in the first place! People are just so inconsiderate these days, only thinking of themselves.

I think new schools should be built with parking, and start and end of day should be staggered to minimise the amount of traffic. I know this is difficult if you have more than one child , but all schools operate after school/ breakfast club these days.

The old, often road side schools are more of a challenge, but I think the schools have to ensure the parents aren’t upsetting the community.

I too live round the corner from a primary school. The inconsiderate parking and squabbles were a complete nightmare. Parents would park from 2 pm just to bag a place. After a few near miss incidents the corners were double yellowed and speed restricted to 20 mph. There wasn't enough policing and enforcement, though.

Recently, the adjoining road has been made 'residents parking only' and wow, what a difference in visibility and noise reduction. Of course, the chaos has just moved a few streets further away!

One of the funniest things I ever heard was an argument between a school parker and a local resident. The driver (who lived less than 10 minutes walk away and didn’t go out to work) ended up shrieking that if she had her way, the whole street would be razed to the ground to provide parking for school.

Which reminds me. Motherland’s back on TV soon, hurray!

In our previous business premises, the entrance was always blocked when I got to work, I’d have to go and park somewhere else till after school time, all our customer parking was taken up with school parents, one woman used to get there about 8.00am, pop to the convenience store to buy pasties for the children’s breakfast, and settle in for the next hour!

When we moved, it was converted into flats, I can’t imagine the rows they must have with residents not being able to get in or out of their car park.

Whatever happened to walking to school? We lived 10 mins from infants and 15 mins from primary and always walked. Mum walked with us to infants to drop off youngest sibling, then 2 eldest carried on by ourselves. No problems ever, also no car available anyway.