Cambridge is an old city and, like many others, has serious traffic and parking problems, not really helped by an apparently car unfriendly City Council.  Public transport is encouraged by very high parking fees and relentless traffic wardens that are collecting hefty fines around the historical centre.  That is not a solution to typical situations of people that, like me, need to go to different places in a single trip, carrying bags and luggage and need to park in between.

A very annoying thing that often happens to me is finding a parking area where you would easily fit, say, 5 cars but because of the way other careless drivers have decided to park you can merely fit 3 or 4 and you waste many minutes driving and polluting, looking for another parking.  Another typical example is when, like in these pictures, people arrive, see an empty space at the end of the lot and they park close to the next car, wasting precious space that becomes totally unusable (highlighted in red).  When this happens I am always asking to myself: is it possible that they just don’t get it?  Can’t they see that nobody, until they move, will be able to use this space?

Obviously the right way is to park closest to the edge, without wasting any space: there will be a large gap between your car and the next one  but when that moves it will allow other drivers to park properly, helping the whole community to save time, CO2, money and anger :-).