One road has become a parking “pandemonium” with motorists battling it out for free parking spaces.
There are no more than 20 properties on Stoke Hill Crescent in Exeter – but 100 cars attempt to cram onto it each day.
Some are bumper to bumper, some are at right angles and some stay put for months – and residents are tearing their hair out, reports DevonLive.
The long-standing issues have been caused by an array of issues that have all culminated in the disastrous parking – from free parking close to the city centre, to football parking, to school-run parents.
And there are no easy answers to deal with the issue.
Resident Jerry Geatens said: “Honestly, it’s an absolute nightmare.
“People park here before going to work in town.
“Then there are the students who don’t move their cars for months.
“My van has been hit twice.
“The whole situation of parking here is out of control.”
City workers opt to park in the street due to the rising cost of parking in the centre – recently upped to £18 a day.
A local infant school adds to the hellish parking stretch.
One resident, who doesn’t want to be named, said: “We have absolutely no problem with the school.
“It was here before any of us.nThey have an absolute right to pick up their children.
“But with so many cars parked so closely together it feels like an obvious safety hazard if children decide to cross between them.”
The introduction of residents’ parking permits in neighbouring Pennsylvania and Rosebarn Lane about five years ago has also intensified the issue as motorists are further squeezed out.
Resident Geoffrey Holwill, who is cross at students parking on the road – and then abandoning their car for months, said:”It is pandemonium here sometimes.”
He said: “Every year at the beginning of term they appear and at the end of term they come and get them.
“These are the people who march up and down complaining about global warming and they come all the way from another part of the county and park their cars here for months.”
He added: “The whole place looks exactly like a car park.”
But others say that living there means learning to live with the parking issues.
Jeff Barrett says: “It is a problem road, there is no doubt about that.
“But you have got to live with it.
“I don’t like it but I have to live with it, everybody has got a right to park on the street.
“If you don’t like it, tough.”
Express.co.uk has approached Exeter City Council for a comment.
