As cars get bigger, the parking spaces seem to get smaller.

In fact they are just the same standard size that was set nationally decades ago.

However, the huge growth in basic car sizes, as much to do with safety features and fashion, has made parking spaces struggle to accommodate them.

Pushing the limits

Now, five councils have prohibited cars longer than five metres from using parking lots.

It comes as 91% of councils say they have no plans to increase the size of parking bays in major towns and cities throughout the nation.

Car size shaming could become more common and see the banning longer vehicles from these places.

The news comes via a Freedom of Information request by Autocar.

Foot down

Five councils who have taken action so far are Wokingham, South Hampshire, Broadland, South Suffolk, and West Devon.

Many well-known vehicles, such as the Mercedes S-Class, Range Rovers, Tesla Model S, BMW 7 Series, Audi A8, Rolls Royce Cullinan, and Kia EV9, would be deemed too large for typical bay parking places.

Many premium sports cars and SUVs are also far longer than five metres.

Data from This is Money revealed that the standard off-street parking length is an average of 4.8 metres.

Out of space

Every UK council received the FOI request from Autocar in an attempt to find out if there were any plans to increase parking spaces in the future, as many haven’t been updated in decades.

The smallest parking spaces were 2.5 metres wide and 4.8 metres long starting in the 1970s.

However, over the previous 50 years, car sizes have increased dramatically.

Most on-street parking is also significantly shorter and thinner than bay parking spaces.

With many English towns and cities built around centuries old planning abnd design, it means there are plenty of narrow streets.

Add the abundance of modern street furniture and growing vehicle sizes, and paked vehicles and running traffic are increasingly in conflict.

Putting on the pounds

According to research released by Transport & Environment (T&E) in January 2024, cars are becoming 1cm wider every two years, which makes them unsuitable for a lot of on-street and off-street parking spots.

T&E stated that this trend will continue due to the rising popularity of SUVs.

The average width of new cars expanded to 180.3cm in the first half of 2023, up from 177.8cm in 2018.

Additionally, information gathered in the two decades leading up to 2020 by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) supports the similar pattern.

The maximum width for new cars in the EU and Great Britain is 255 cm, the same as that for buses and lorries.

T&E study indicates that of the top 100 models sold in 2023, 52% of them were too wide to fit in the 180-cm minimum required for on-street parking in key cities including London, Paris, and Rome.