School parking mess angers residents
‘‘I was waiting with the horn going and nobody would do anything.’’
A parking bunfight outside a Christchurch primary school has required the intervention of parking wardens and the police.
Albert Tce residents near St Martin’s primary school say they are fed-up with parents parking across driveways as they drop off or pick-up children, blocking their right of way.
Police and parking wardens have visited the street to tell parents to tidy up their parking act.
The situation has become so dire for resident Meg Hill, she changed the time her 3-year-old daughter went to kindergarten because she could not get out of her home on time.
‘‘I was waiting with the horn going and nobody would do anything.
‘‘It’s always just with them [parents]. Like it’s just today, or just for a couple of minutes, or they are just in a hurry, but for us it all adds up,’’ she said.
Hill said the worst time was at 3pm when parents would leave their cars parked and go to collect their children.
She said if parents were not parked over the driveway they were parked too close.
The road code says cars should be parked one metre from a driveway.
‘‘Sometimes I can get out of the drive but I can only go straight ahead to the neighbour’s house, I can’t turn,’’ Hill said.
Hill’s husband, Martin, said they considered printing out copies of the road code to put under people’s window wipers.
One resident painted a one metre mark in pink outside a driveway.
Resident Mustafa Almuqbel said cars were parked bumper-to-bumper.
‘‘This is really becoming an issue for us . . . People don’t respect the one metre policy and are really careless.
‘‘I always get stuck waiting for people to move their cars.’’
Almuqbel said once he was trapped in his drive for more than 20 minutes when he was trying to drop his 3-year-old daughter off to an Opawa kindergarten on his way to work.
St Martins School principal Rob Callaghan said he felt for the neighbours and considered some parents’ driving ‘‘downright dangerous’’.
Callaghan said Christchurch City Council traffic wardens recently roamed the streets warning parents to cleanup their act.
‘‘We have spoken to local police staff and they will be patrolling at irregular times and will ticket as appropriate,’’ Callaghan said.
He said a request was made for the government to consider a drop-off area on school grounds in its rebuild plans.