camrob wrote:Yes, on street parking is the norm. Funny thing is though, motorists who are usually happy to park in the cycle lane seem to get annoyed when cyclists have to move into their ("the cars") lane to go round such obstructions. I've lost count of how many close passes, raging drivers and collisions I've seen on YouTube with precisely this scenario.
I had an example of this attitude some years ago when I represented the cyclist's POV as the studio guest at a local radio phone-in. The other two weren't in the studio at all. just pretending to be there. I'd ridden in at short notice and my Birdy was sitting beside me making a moral point. Anyway, one of the others was a driving instructor who was bitterly complaining that children cycling in the street (outside their own houses) made things very difficult for his pupils when he was holding lessons there (the children were unfortunate enough to live on a test route, of course.) Somehow, the subject of pavement parking in the area (streets of terrace houses fronting straight onto the footway) came up and in response to one angry caller he explained that their owners had nowhere else to park. He was unreceptive to a suggestion by that caller that the children had nowhere else to play.