On 16 Jan, 12:21, David Cantrell wrote:

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 04:46:03PM -0000, tim..... wrote:

"Will" wrote in message:
Friends want to go to an Embassy in Queensgate from East Sussex
but want to take the car to a railway station just outside London and
then catch overland train into London.

You're not going to find reasonable "all day" parking in Croydon, and the
roads are pretty clogged up in the morning.

You're going to have to look further out, Purely perhaps, or Caterham (I'm
outside my area of knowledge now!)

Or further in. *It's usually possible to park a couple of streets away
from stations like Streatham or Streatham Common, or just abuse a
supermarket car park.


Absolutely true. There is a sometimes a belief that all streets in
London are subject to some kind of parking restrictions, which is
simply not true. However the number of controlled parking zones has
grown a great deal in recent years and indeed is still growing in
number, and if there aren't CPZs there are sometimes other
restrictions such as a yellow line only being in force for an hour or
two in the middle of the day that does the job at stopping all-day
commuter parking.

All that said, there are often side streets a little further away from
stations (and high streets) that are totally unrestricted. The other
thing that's quite often the case is that parking restrictions only
apply Monday to Friday, so parking at weekends are not a problem.

Regarding supermarket car parks - most now threaten you with a 'civil
penalty charge' (or some such) if you overstay the maximum stay, and
the companies that enforce these restrictions on behalf of
supermarkets can get your details from the DVLA. I don't really know
the legalities behind this all and to what extent this can be
enforced, but I presume there's something in it. That said, this does
somewhat rely on the enforcement taking place - more often than not it
just seems to be a threat.

The one thing that many people appear to have issues with when it
comes to parking their car on side streets is some fear that it will
get broken into, stolen or vandalised. I think that, with regards to
much of London at least, this is a rather overblown concern. Firstly,
theft of cars is not that common - most modern cars have immobilisers
which are pretty challenging to defeat after all, though it's true
that very high-end cars are stolen to order. Secondly, cars are
generally only broken into if there's a promise that there's something
worth stealing from them - putting bags in the boot so they cannot be
seen (even if there's nothing of value in them) and ensuring one takes
one's wallet or purse and mobile with them plus taking the fascia off
of an in-car stereo system wards this off. Thirdly, vandalism to cars
parked on street doesn't happen that often (and the chances of it
happening can be reduced by not parking in el dodgy street). I and
others have parked reasonable cars (not very high-end but not
rustbuckets either) all over London to no ill effect at all.

Last point - one real issue with parking in somewhere like Streatham
is actually getting in and then back out again on the A23, which is
basically gets pretty clogged up at peak times. It is of course
possible to take a number of alternative routes to avoid the A23 but
these can be a bit involved and I'm not sure I'd recommend these to
people unfamiliar to the side street ways of sarf London.