In his latest Post column, Scotstoun's Councillor Chris Cunningham shares his thoughts on parking on pavements...
 

The vexed issue of parking on pavements has raised its head again following Edinburgh’s decision to implement a blanket ban on this practice.

Will Glasgow follow suit and, if so, what will it mean for you, me and our collective neighbours?

Let us start with the obvious – drivers should ideally not park on pavements.

Doing so restricts the space for pedestrians and potentially endangers them if they have to walk on the road.

Clearly, that’s not fair and it is reasonable that pedestrians should look to the various authorities to fix this.

However – and there’s always a ‘however’ – what if the problem is that neither the road nor the pavement is wide enough in the first place?

Will a simple ban on something resolve that or will it just shift the problem to something or somewhere else?

There are plenty of pictures and videos out there of narrow pavements completely taken up by large vehicles, forcing people to go around and onto the road.

No one wants this.

For the majority of roads in Glasgow, this won’t be an issue. The roads will be wide enough to allow for street-only parking and the issue then would only be the occasional inconsiderate motorist.

But what about the streets where that is not the case?

There are plenty of them and many are in the Scotstoun, Knightswood and Yoker areas, where my constituents live.

There are more than a few streets where there isn’t sufficient space for cars to park wholly on the street and for other vehicles to drive down that street, even in single file, never mind both ways.

The legislation allows for exemptions, as you might expect, and these exemptions are fairly straightforward.

The first involves cars parked on a street where the width is too narrow to allow an emergency vehicle to drive down it.

The second is that, even if a car is parked on the pavement, there is at least 1.5 metres of pavement left clear for pedestrians.

Both of these seem perfectly sensible and I would expect any scheme that councils come forward with to allow for them.

Not to do so would surely be flying in the face of common sense.

Or maybe that’s just a comment on Edinburgh?