No more parking spaces!

Who does a week's shopping in a convenience store though?

Car rentals and public transport are great when they're available, but what if someone needs to travel for work outside a public transport route, get to a hospital quickly, wants to tour around the country for a few weeks etc?

This new narrative of cars being evil is wearying, why the push to get us all into expensive electric cars if many won't have anywhere to park them?

Would it not be better to make driving larger cars than necessary prohibitively expensive? Even that is into nanny state territory.

You still have your car though so it obviously is important to you.

It's the fact that they're proposing to remove the choice of whether or not to own a car from future buyers of these developments that's the issue, some people genuinely need a car.

Private parking spaces will always be available - its been pretty common in larger cities for decades now that there's no parking provided, or a tiny space:unit count in a development.

I've got family / in-laws at two entire opposite ends of the country; but it might actually be cheaper for me to hire cars for those visits at this stage. Must do the maths on that.

A potential employer being impractical to get to applies to when you have a car too. I've been offered a job in Sandyford, took a look at the M50 at those times and decided not to.

Also plenty of employers don't offer parking at their location anymore either, so you've nowhere to leave your vehicle there either.

You could theoretically be offered a job 20 kilometres from home, an easy commute away from congested roads and have to turn it down because you can't own a car.

Some people can happily never drive or own a car, others need one. It's impractical to build a housing development with no parking facilities. Good luck too if they want anyone visiting them from further afield where a car would be necessary.

And I could theoretically win the lotto tomorrow.

If I've made the decision to buy/rent somewhere that I can't have a car (there are tens to hundreds of thousands of places where this applies already) I'll already know that I've limited work options to those places that are accessible by public transport.

There are plenty of city centre apartment (and office) buildings with zero parking already.

If that happens, bluntly - you move.

We cannot make plans on the basis of edge cases that might occur. Car spaces are astoundingly expensive, either in terms of land use or extraction costs for underground (which, as we've recently seen, can also flood) so lower priced developments are going to leave them out as much as possible.

11sqm for a parking space is over a quarter of the floor area of the smallest new apartments allowed; and that doesn't count the space any access lanes use.

I would be fully supportive of this if the OPW gives up 5 civil service parking spaces for every on street space that the Dept of HLG want to remove from the city/town streets.

Underground car parks are exceptionally expensive to build and push prices up as a result

Restaurant in the next village down from us closed down in November. We used to go to it every second week for years. Used to meet family for meals often in there. We all got to know the owner very well. We stopped when it became a pain in the hole to get to it. The parking restrictions meant you couldnt drive there anymore without parking a km away from it or paying too much for parking a bit closer. All well and good if it wasnt raining or you didnt feel like walking or the parents werent going.

There was a bus that stops near it every 30 mins from about 1km away from us. Thats hassle you dont need too.

Anyway we all stared going to a couple of new restaurants a bit further away with parking in the premises or close by, but they arent near as good as the old regular. I think since last Jan when the parking was taken away until November when it closed we had only gone to it once. My Dad met the owner a couple of months before they closed and he told him that business had gone down the toilet since the paid parking was introduced.

I know some people who drive to the next village over for everything now rather than going to that one anymore, just because you can park for free.

Promise? 🙏

Would probably add €12 to €16 to the cost of an evening if 3 families met there. Better in our pockets than yours. And you can be sure thats only an "introductory price" and it will go up. Why would we want to pay when we can met up without paying. Clearly we werent the only ones who thought that way. We could all (including a pregnant SIL and pensioner parents) hop on our bikes from our respective homes and lock all our bikes together for free I suppose.

Who do you think should pay for the land and facilities required to store your private property?

Mr. Let them eat Cake has spoken.

That's assuming they live close enough to a hospital, and have the cash readily available in their bank balance to pay for one (and possibly a return journey too). Taxis aren't cheap.

I wouldn't be relying on a taxi with a sick relative.

I also wouldn't purchase a home anywhere that did not have parking in the first place, but this nonsense of removing parking or that everyone can live car free, has to stop.

If they don't have a car sitting outside their door, they're saving hundreds of euro each month, so a couple of taxi fares will be a drop in the ocean.

Taxis will do long journeys if necessary. Taxis will take credit cards.

It's funny how the 'aren't cheap' argument applies to taxis but not to cars apparently. If they don't have a car sitting outside their door, they're saving hundreds of euro each month, so a couple of taxi fares will be a drop in the ocean.

The real nonsense here is the suggestion of 'removing parking' or that 'everyone can live car free'. There are no such suggestions involved in this proposal, as you well know.

Are we swapping general life stories now, or is there some point to your anecdote?

Again, you're assuming everyone has a credit card (I don't).

Sorry Andrew, I should know by now it's a complete exercise in futility trying to reason with you on anything relating to car ownership, so lets spare us both the bother.

We'll never find common ground on this. I'll be keeping my car. They can bury me in it.

As you well know, a form of personal transportation has a multitude of uses, not the one scenario to which you would limit this discussion. You are not capable of engaging honestly in open discussion.

Yes, all forms of personal transportation have multiple uses. I'm answering the point that was raised here, no more and no less.

What IS his point though? Let's get it out on the table in plain English so we can all see it.

Speaking of being clear, the words that you attribute to me are not words that I've ever said, but it's interesting to see how far you and others have to exaggerate to find something to complaint about.

Read the post and the point is glaringly obvious.

You have umpteen posts about the need to get people out of their cars and how easy it is to cycle everywhere going back years. You know this, of course, but sure carry on with the whataboutery.

Yah, no one ever cycled in snow in a cargo bike, right?

Not everyone can do without a car. Obviously the person travelling cross country every week needs a car. It makes their life much easier. But we cannot plan cities on edge cases like this.

The article quoted even acknowledges that alternatives such as car sharing must be in place.

We got rid of our car. We replaced it with two electric bikes and an electric cargo bike. We have groceries delivered and we deliberately live in an area with good public transport links. We could get a bigger/ better house in a more remote location but we chose to live in a more urban area and there are sacrificies.

We could not manage without the car unless there was car sharing in the area. Ive needed a car randomly a few times in the last year at the last minute and the car sharing makes it possible. For our summer vacation we rented a car for two weeks. we got rid of the car when our youngest was old enough to sit in a bike seat.

Our children love the cargo bike compared to the car. We love the cargo bike compared to the car. We acknowledge that we are lucky that we can go without a car.