Cars are getting too big for their parking spaces
Local cars have grown 10cm wider in the last 20 years, but parking spaces have remained the same size and the States has no plans to change that.
The average width of a new car has now passed 180cm, having grown at an average of 0.5cm each year since 2001. It has led to headaches in local car parks, with cars suffering dents and chipped paint from other car doors.
Traffic & Highway Services lead officer Colin Le Page said that Guernsey car parks use current UK standard sizes for parking spaces of 2.4m wide by 4.8m deep.
That size has not increased in 20 years.
Mr Le Page added there were currently no plans to increase the size of spaces as this would go against the States’ environmental policies.
‘This would be contrary to the aims of the States-approved integrated transport strategy which promotes smaller, lower emission vehicles and would have the negative effect of reducing the number of parking spaces available,’ he said.
‘There are, however, a number of on-street parking spaces which are not marked out with boxes, which enable larger vehicles to park, providing the road layout and width makes it possible for those who are driving to park without compromising the safety of any other road users.’
The car width data comes from a study by European campaign group Transport and Environment, which said the the trend for larger cars has been driven by sales in SUVs.
The measurements do not include unfolded wing mirrors, which on average add 20cm to a car’s width.
In 2023, Which? the consumer watchdog organisation, found that 161 car models were now too big for the average parking space in the UK. Twenty-seven of those models were so wide that it would be difficult to open the doors while constrained within a single parking bay.
A new Land Rover Defender – the largest widely available SUV model – is just over 2.1m wide, including wing mirrors, leaving just 15cm either side if it is parked in the centre of a standard parking space.
SUVs have recently been the targets of new parking charges across Europe.
Voters in Paris recently backed a proposal from the capital’s mayor to triple parking charges on SUV-style cars, to 18 Euros an hour.
Lyon adopted higher parking costs for heavier vehicles, requiring SUVs to pay 15 Euros more per month than an average car and 30 Euros more than electric vehicles.
The Association of German Cities came out in support of higher parking charges based on the size of the vehicle with the city of Tubingen introducing a 50% mark-up on residential parking charges in 2022.
