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Have things been getting a bit squeezy in your apartment parking lots recently? Are you one of those unfortunates who have to push your Toyota Corolla in and out between a Toyota Hilux and a Ford Ranger, because your doors won’t open far enough?
I mention those three models because the Hilux and Ranger are Australia’s two biggest selling vehicles with total sales of over 90,000 in 2018. The nifty little Corolla came third with sales of just over 30,000.
This is not a new phenomenon. Crew-cab 4WDs, with four doors and a utility tray, have been the best-selling vehicles on our roads for the past three years.
Add in other “monster” trucks like the Mitsubishi Triton, the Isuzu D-Max, the Nissan Navarra and even the Mercedes X Class and there would have to be a quarter of million of these huge vehicles on our roads right now.
By the way, city slicker, what do you use it for – taking your Nespresso capsules for recycling?
Anyway, what does this have to do with apartment living? The answer is, space and the lack thereof.
At 5.33 metres long, the hugely popular Hilux SR5, only just fits into the regulation minimum car space length of 5.4 m. The longer Ford Ranger is over the edge, literally.
Now, a new block’s developer, mindful of the trends in vehicle sales, may have been generous with their parking allocations. But many will have squeezed every last square centimetre out of the available space and if you’re in an old building, the pips will be squeaking.
The long-established minimum dimensions of 2.4 metres wide and 5.4 metres long for parking spaces were based decades ago on the average sizes of cars that would have allowed enough room for doors to swing open without scratching or denting the neighbour’s paintwork.
But in the bumper to bumper battlefield of today’s strata parking, you could be making it hard on your neighbour just to get in and out of their car. And if you have anything else in your parking space, your super-ute is probably going to be across the line.
Apart from forcing others to manoeuvre round you, your oversized truck is technically on common property and you could be breached and even towed under some strata laws.
In truth, there seems to be a lot of give and take in strata on who can park what, and where. It’s fairly common for town house residents to park their vehicles on a common property driveway while they fill their garages with all the stuff that won’t fit into their units.
There’s probably a by-law that says they can’t do that without written permission, but if everyone’s doing it, who cares (apart from the poor blighter who can’t get to their garage at the end)?
So what can you do if your parking spaces are taken over by way too many “monster” 4WDs and parking has become more of a hassle than it should be?
Theoretically, you could put a width restriction on the size of vehicles that could be driven across common property. After all, you may have a height restriction to stop vans and trucks ripping the pipework and lighting off the ceilings.
So if your monster ute fills every cubic centimetre of your parking space, and there’s a half dozen others nearby, don’t be surprised to see a new width restriction by-law proposed on the agenda of your next AGM.
This column first appeared in the Australian Financial Review.
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These monsters trucks (with tiny drivers) should be banned from carparks if they don’t legally fit the allocated space provided. We have one where I live, half the front end sticks out across the common property drive way. Honestly, why are they so big, surely a tradie doesn’t have that many tools. It reminds me of the Freudian notion of some males preoccupation with size!!
I’ll take the media bait ….
2017 Commodore – 1900mm
2019 Corolla – 1790mm
2019 Hilux – 1855mm
2019 Camry – 1840mm
so actually you have more room than historically to open your doors….. Most of these trucks are relatively narrow ….
Length can be an issue but width is normally the big factor in practical terms (per the article)…
We are facing a ‘perfect storm’ of giant gentrified tradies’ trucks — e g VW Amarok, a new entrant from Mercedes-Benz, and probably other luxury brands. Add to these the familiar giant tarted-up farm implements that have been around for years under various illustrious labels, and imagine them side-by-side in parking lots built in the age of the XM Falcon and the EH Holden.
Width is not necessarily any more of an issue than with a regular five-seat sedan (e g the Camry or Commodore mentioned by Bn) provided the vehicle is centred accurately between the marked lines. Tradies are generally very good at parking their crew-cab trucks accurately, but the same is not necessarily true of other family members still adjusting to the jump in size from the mid-sized hatchbacks to which they may have been accustomed. There will be similar problems with the giant SUVs that some may feel they need to maintain credibility in the school pickup queue or the carpool for Saturday sports.
I argued in my submission to the review of the NSW Strata Management Act that it would be desirable to add some sort of preamble to the Act stating an expectation that occupants observe not just the letter of their Scheme’s By-laws, but also the spirit of those that are (or should be) intended to facilitate living at close quarters and sharing facilities. That could include the unwritten rule, obeyed by most of us, that we park in a way that does not deny our immediate neighbours a reasonable amount of space to access their correctly parked vehicles. It would be a challenge to codify this in a way that will allow it to be enforced for those who take the line that they can do what they like with their property unless there is a by-law that says they can’t.
I just measured our designated car spaces. These are 3.5m long x 1.8m wide!
There is spare common property to move some car spaces and make room for all. I guess we need to amend our bylaw but some people are very attached to their particular spot!
I own a VW Polo, and receive regular e-mails from the dealership where I bought it. The latest one includes reference to the latest version of the Amarok truck and starts with
“That feeling you get when you know nothing stands in your way? That’s what it’s like to drive the all-new Amarok.
Now is your chance to get behind the wheel and max out on everything.”What hope is there?
Maybe it’s up to the big truck guys to propose a motion to increase all or some carpark space dimensions to accommodate these new vehicles. They will get the message either way, and either side will have something to lean on going forward.
I own a VW Polo, and receive regular e-mails from the dealership where I bought it. The latest one includes reference to the latest version of the Amarok truck and starts with
“That feeling you get when you know nothing stands in your way? That’s what it’s like to drive the all-new Amarok.
Now is your chance to get behind the wheel and max out on everything.”
What hope is there?
….. In this user-pays world, that could be a route worth exploring.
Interesting FT, even NCAT, still talk of strata being collective living while we see the user pay vibe permeating other views.
Strata has lost its identity as people from the user pay world move in.