How much is a private driveway worth?

GDB2222

MobileSaver said:

GDB2222 said:

Section62 said:

GDB2222 said:

If £630 is not enough to deter people from having several cars, then add another zero or two to the figure?

The starting point here should be "why do we want to stop people owning cars?"  Not having a driveway helps stop vehicle ownership, but the reason why that is thought to be a good thing needs to be carefully considered.

Just playing the devil’s advocate, if vehicle excise duty went up to £6300 say, we would definitely be looking at some sort of sharing arrangement. A lot of people would. 

If duty were £6300 we could pay around £3-4 a mile for taxis and save money. At that price, there would be plenty of taxis, too. So, no waiting around, which is one thing that puts us off taxis at the moment. 

As @Section62 suggested, the real question is what are you trying to achieve by increasing vehicle tax?

If instead of using your own private car you use a taxi for all journeys then that doesn't reduce usage of roads at all - the exact same journey is still being made, just in a taxi instead of your own car; in fact road usage would increase dramatically as typically the taxi will need to travel firstly to your starting point and then later in the day travel back again to wherever you need picking up for your return journey.

In my rural area, the taxi would have to travel around 10 miles just to get to me and then probably 10 miles back to the nearest town after dropping me off again so that's an additional 20 miles of congestion, pollution and wear and tear for just one return journey. For the same reason it also means that even if the taxi happened to be sitting their empty when I called then typically I'd still have to wait at least 15 minutes before they could get to me - in my own private car I could be at my destination in that time!

We are well off the point that the OP asked, but we were exploring the situation where the number of cars on the road keeps increasing, without any increase in parking spaces. Mad Max parking was how it was described.

That's certainly a big problem in a lot of urban areas. The obvious solution for those areas is to make car ownership less attractive. Ownership, because it is parking we were talking about, rather than driving, although that's also a problem.  The alternative seems to be to pave over the remaining green spaces to provide more parking. 

MobileSaver

GDB2222 said:

MobileSaver said:

GDB2222 said:

Section62 said:

GDB2222 said:

If £630 is not enough to deter people from having several cars, then add another zero or two to the figure?

The starting point here should be "why do we want to stop people owning cars?"  Not having a driveway helps stop vehicle ownership, but the reason why that is thought to be a good thing needs to be carefully considered.

Just playing the devil’s advocate, if vehicle excise duty went up to £6300 say, we would definitely be looking at some sort of sharing arrangement. A lot of people would. 

If duty were £6300 we could pay around £3-4 a mile for taxis and save money. At that price, there would be plenty of taxis, too. So, no waiting around, which is one thing that puts us off taxis at the moment. 

As @Section62 suggested, the real question is what are you trying to achieve by increasing vehicle tax?

If instead of using your own private car you use a taxi for all journeys then that doesn't reduce usage of roads at all - the exact same journey is still being made, just in a taxi instead of your own car; in fact road usage would increase dramatically as typically the taxi will need to travel firstly to your starting point and then later in the day travel back again to wherever you need picking up for your return journey.

we were exploring the situation where the number of cars on the road keeps increasing, without any increase in parking spaces. ... The obvious solution for those areas is to make car ownership less attractive.

Agreed but increasing vehicle tax penalises everyone everywhere so would be a less than ideal solution.

Perhaps declare such areas as Limited Parking Zones and charge a daily fee similar to the Congestion Charge for any vehicle entering and staying within the zone for longer than an hour. You could refine it with exemptions to apply to anyone who has their own off-street parking.

GDB2222 said:

The alternative seems to be to pave over the remaining green spaces to provide more parking. 

Yes and possibly directly relevant to the OP is that this is likely to happen more and more in the future.

Obviously creating more parking spaces costs money so my suggestion to councils would be to charge a higher council tax on properties with no off-street parking. Again this could be refined so that residents who don't own a car get a discount.

Slinky

Going back to the original post, several people have misread the posting. The property with the parking is cheaper than the one without, and they are trying to argue down the price of the property with no parking.

[Deleted User]

tooldle said:

[Deleted User] said:

lookstraightahead said:

With so many people living in flats etc, the whole electric car thing will be sorted. You won't need a driveway to charge a car, in the same way as you don't need a stable to keep your horse and cart, or a huge room to keep your videos in. Or a tank for your water. Or a meeting room for a staff meeting. Or a floppy disk. Etc. Space needs to be utilised in a better way so driveways will feel really old fashioned in the future, and a waste of space/resource.

It's the UK. When do we ever sort these things out?

Look at the parking situation. It's Mad Max in many parts of the country. Far from being sorted, it's actually getting worse.

You would be mad to trust this to be worked out.

Provisioning of charging points for electric cars is definitely being worked out. Councils are on it both with identifying residential areas that will need points installing and in some cases preparatory works already started. 
The UK is a car obsessed country.

Unless they put a charger for every house, billed on that house's home energy bill and able to use free solar power when available, it's going to be an expensive disadvantage.

MFWannabe

Would be interesting to see what OP has decided if anything as this post seems to have gone way off track of the original question 

Section62

MobileSaver said:

 

...

Perhaps declare such areas as Limited Parking Zones and charge a daily fee similar to the Congestion Charge for any vehicle entering and staying within the zone for longer than an hour. You could refine it with exemptions to apply to anyone who has their own off-street parking.

GDB2222 said:

The alternative seems to be to pave over the remaining green spaces to provide more parking. 

Yes and possibly directly relevant to the OP is that this is likely to happen more and more in the future.

Obviously creating more parking spaces costs money so my suggestion to councils would be to charge a higher council tax on properties with no off-street parking. Again this could be refined so that residents who don't own a car get a discount.

Exactly this.  Councils already have controlled parking zones in their toolbox of solutions to on-street parking issues.  It is relatively simple for them to make a traffic order limiting the number of permits to 1, 2 or 3 per household and totally regulating the way in which people park on-street.  This method can be applied with such granularity that different problems can be tackled within different parts of any individual street.

If the question is "how can we solve the parking problem on this street?" the answer is to use a CPZ to target the problem, not the scattergun approach of wacking up VED for everyone, regardless of the problem they cause.

The issue, as I mentioned above, is that implementation of CPZ's (as with on-street charging) introduces regulation in the way people park, and almost inevitably reduces the total number of parking spaces.

That's why this discussion is relevant to the OP's question "How much is a driveway worth?"  - when/if the parking situation on that road gets so bad that something needs to be done, the little green will very likely be under threat, and its loss doesn't mean those properties would gain their own driveways either.  The house with a driveway has that in the bank.

ProDave

lookstraightahead said:

I really find the whole issue of having a driveway a bit old fashioned. You don't 'need' a driveway as a general rule. It's a bit like having a bath in the bathroom. Some  want one, others don't really see the point.

It all depends what you "do"

Without a driveway, where would I park my normal car and my classic car (that lives in the garage)?  where would I park my caravan and general purpose trailer?  Where would I do my own maintenance on my vehicles?  (no I would not work on a car up on jacks in the street)  Where would I keep a car if I for whatever reason needed to SORN it?

What it boils down to is "are you happy to live your life without a private car?"  That would mean going everywhere by public transport and by definition being limited to places you can get to by public transport and at the times that it runs.  That would be for everything, work, shopping, socialising, holidays.

That is probably where climate change will drive us, but none of the politiicians have yet had the guts to say "to solve this you must ALL LOWER your expectations of live and be prepared to live a very much less convenient and very restricted life.

lookstraightahead

ProDave said:

lookstraightahead said:

I really find the whole issue of having a driveway a bit old fashioned. You don't 'need' a driveway as a general rule. It's a bit like having a bath in the bathroom. Some  want one, others don't really see the point.

It all depends what you "do"

Without a driveway, where would I park my normal car and my classic car (that lives in the garage)?  where would I park my caravan and general purpose trailer?  Where would I do my own maintenance on my vehicles?  (no I would not work on a car up on jacks in the street)  Where would I keep a car if I for whatever reason needed to SORN it?

What it boils down to is "are you happy to live your life without a private car?"  That would mean going everywhere by public transport and by definition being limited to places you can get to by public transport and at the times that it runs.  That would be for everything, work, shopping, socialising, holidays.

That is probably where climate change will drive us, but none of the politiicians have yet had the guts to say "to solve this you must ALL LOWER your expectations of live and be prepared to live a very much less convenient and very restricted life.

Sounds like you need a forecourt Most properties driveways are shrinking to only having space for one car anyway. When I had a caravan, I didn't park it on my drive it was kept in a secure lock up. I don't have a classic car, but surely most people don't unless it's a hobby / investment.

I've found walking and catching public transport less restrictive than when I used the car every day,  even for short journeys. We still have one that we share, but I'm certainly healthier. I'm not saying go totally without a car, I'm saying you don't always need a driveway. It's not a necessity to a lot of people, just a switch in perspective. 

[Deleted User]

MobileSaver said:

GDB2222 said:

MobileSaver said:

GDB2222 said:

Section62 said:

GDB2222 said:

If £630 is not enough to deter people from having several cars, then add another zero or two to the figure?

The starting point here should be "why do we want to stop people owning cars?"  Not having a driveway helps stop vehicle ownership, but the reason why that is thought to be a good thing needs to be carefully considered.

Just playing the devil’s advocate, if vehicle excise duty went up to £6300 say, we would definitely be looking at some sort of sharing arrangement. A lot of people would. 

If duty were £6300 we could pay around £3-4 a mile for taxis and save money. At that price, there would be plenty of taxis, too. So, no waiting around, which is one thing that puts us off taxis at the moment. 

As @Section62 suggested, the real question is what are you trying to achieve by increasing vehicle tax?

If instead of using your own private car you use a taxi for all journeys then that doesn't reduce usage of roads at all - the exact same journey is still being made, just in a taxi instead of your own car; in fact road usage would increase dramatically as typically the taxi will need to travel firstly to your starting point and then later in the day travel back again to wherever you need picking up for your return journey.

we were exploring the situation where the number of cars on the road keeps increasing, without any increase in parking spaces. ... The obvious solution for those areas is to make car ownership less attractive.

Agreed but increasing vehicle tax penalises everyone everywhere so would be a less than ideal solution.

Perhaps declare such areas as Limited Parking Zones and charge a daily fee similar to the Congestion Charge for any vehicle entering and staying within the zone for longer than an hour. You could refine it with exemptions to apply to anyone who has their own off-street parking.

GDB2222 said:

The alternative seems to be to pave over the remaining green spaces to provide more parking. 

Yes and possibly directly relevant to the OP is that this is likely to happen more and more in the future.

Obviously creating more parking spaces costs money so my suggestion to councils would be to charge a higher council tax on properties with no off-street parking. Again this could be refined so that residents who don't own a car get a discount.

So your plan is to punish people who couldn't afford a driveway with even higher taxes. Sounds regressive.

lookstraightahead

[Deleted User] said:

MobileSaver said:

GDB2222 said:

MobileSaver said:

GDB2222 said:

Section62 said:

GDB2222 said:

If £630 is not enough to deter people from having several cars, then add another zero or two to the figure?

The starting point here should be "why do we want to stop people owning cars?"  Not having a driveway helps stop vehicle ownership, but the reason why that is thought to be a good thing needs to be carefully considered.

Just playing the devil’s advocate, if vehicle excise duty went up to £6300 say, we would definitely be looking at some sort of sharing arrangement. A lot of people would. 

If duty were £6300 we could pay around £3-4 a mile for taxis and save money. At that price, there would be plenty of taxis, too. So, no waiting around, which is one thing that puts us off taxis at the moment. 

As @Section62 suggested, the real question is what are you trying to achieve by increasing vehicle tax?

If instead of using your own private car you use a taxi for all journeys then that doesn't reduce usage of roads at all - the exact same journey is still being made, just in a taxi instead of your own car; in fact road usage would increase dramatically as typically the taxi will need to travel firstly to your starting point and then later in the day travel back again to wherever you need picking up for your return journey.

we were exploring the situation where the number of cars on the road keeps increasing, without any increase in parking spaces. ... The obvious solution for those areas is to make car ownership less attractive.

Agreed but increasing vehicle tax penalises everyone everywhere so would be a less than ideal solution.

Perhaps declare such areas as Limited Parking Zones and charge a daily fee similar to the Congestion Charge for any vehicle entering and staying within the zone for longer than an hour. You could refine it with exemptions to apply to anyone who has their own off-street parking.

GDB2222 said:

The alternative seems to be to pave over the remaining green spaces to provide more parking. 

Yes and possibly directly relevant to the OP is that this is likely to happen more and more in the future.

Obviously creating more parking spaces costs money so my suggestion to councils would be to charge a higher council tax on properties with no off-street parking. Again this could be refined so that residents who don't own a car get a discount.

So your plan is to punish people who couldn't afford a driveway with even higher taxes. Sounds regressive.

I agree - can't ever see that scenario winning votes.