A Wellington resident has admitted illegally painting yellow lines on his street, but says it was an act of desperation for public safety.
Russell Taylor been painting the yellow lines for 20 years in a bid to stop cars parking either side of the road.
Taylor has lived in Holloway Rd in Aro Valley since the 1970s, and has seen his fair share of accidents and near-collisions on the tight and narrow street.
"Cars can park there, they just shouldn't park on the blind corners," he told Newstalk ZB's Rachel Smalley.
"They should make it so that the fire engines and the ambulances and the rubbish truck etc etc can get through.
"The thing that really drove me to do it - this week there was a big slip that needed a 20-tonne digger. They could only get up the road by having a couple of burly Maori chaps shift the cars out of the road, so they could get through."
Twenty years ago he painted his first yellow lines before refreshing them a decade later, but said he had been campaigning on the issue for nearly 50 years.
He said he would continue to do so until the Wellington City Council put in its own parking lines.
"I do it quite openly," Taylor said. "It's not something I've hidden, or feel that I need to. I don't think it's a crime. Well, I'm not sure, nobody's told me it's a crime.
"The first time, I was cleaning out my basement and found some yellow paint. That was when I first did it."
Despite Taylor's do-it-yourself attitude, Wellington City Council spokesman Richard MacLean said his fake yellow lines were illegal and that traffic staff would inspect the yellow lines next week.
"Suffice to say that, yes, we're aware of problems and complaints about parking in Holloway Rd - and that the Fire Service had trouble getting to a house fire there in the past year because of parked vehicles."
The council is expected to remove the yellow lines and is expected to begin a formal consultation over introducing a no parking or no stopping zone on Holloway Rd.