When Doing the Bare Minimum Never Seems Quite Enough

 Welsh Water (Dwr Cymru) has been doing some essential public works in the surrounding streets that included digging up roads and pavements. They worked diligently and reinstated the roads to something like their original condition. This involved using a minimum amount of yellow paint (Photo 1) ...

Photo 1: Road Markings after Reinstatement

On the narrow streets around here, where there are too many cars for the available car parking spaces, the new yellow lines may be a little confusing. You can just make out that the yellow lines stop this side of the gate. It would have helped if the contractors for Welsh Water had removed the overlay of dirt on the existing yellow lines that were not there before they started their excavations.

Photo 2: New & Old Road Markings

Better still, the local authority could have asked them to repaint the existing lines to clearly demarcate the parking and no parking zones. Betterer still, the local authority could have reassessed the lengths and locations of the "no parking double yellow lines" and squeezed a few more parking spaces in these streets. When I asked the local authority to review the situation a few years ago, I got the impression it would be a lot of trouble and cost a fair bit of money.

Unfortunately, we have a few thoughtless residents who think nothing about parking opposite the street exit (Photo 2). It may be a peculiarly English trait that people believe they have the right to park immediately outside their front door - and that nobody else should infringe on this basic human right. Today, I have seen two vans (Ford Transit-type) negotiate this corner with difficulty, having had to mount the pavement to get round. Larger vehicles (fire engines, ambulances, refuse collectors) find it impossible to take this corner when someone is parked there and have to reverse back down the street.

Doing the bare minimum or quiet quitting seems to be more prevalent these days.