Aucklanders love their cars. But with that, comes a squeeze on parking spaces in many residential areas. Now residents are taking matters into their own hands - attempting to use cones to reserve spots for
Cones, buckets, bins used in Auckland parking war as cars spill into street
"Please don't park your car here, because it's in front of my house and we need to stop! Thank!!! (sic)" the note said.
Peihinga is part of a new subdivision - Watson bought her house new three years ago. Almost every home on the street had seven bedrooms and extra boarders stayed at many of the houses, including her own, Watson said.
READ MORE
• Matt Heath: Orange is new black in our road cone world
• East Auckland neighbours outraged after cones put out illegally to block public parking
Five or six cars belonged to each home, so there was an increasing battle for parking space on the road - made worse because people seemed to use their double garages for storage, not parking.
Watson had made the mistake of parking in front of a neighbour's house - the only spot free at the time - and later found the hand-scrawled note on her windscreen and an orange cone jammed up against her back bumper.
But when she reported the issue to Auckland Council and to the Howick Local Board, she was advised her neighbours' actions were not legal.
"Simply remove the bin and place it on the owner's berm/ letterbox area," a local board representative advised Watson.
"Peihinga Road is a public road, property owners only own their section up to the boundary line – property owners don't own the footpath or the berm and most definitely not the road."
But there was little more they could do.
It's not the first time Auckland residents have resorted to extreme tactics to save spaces for their cars.
In Bucklands Beach last year one household was called out for reserving a parking spot with a line of toy cones, sparking a heated argument. When a neighbour complained she claimed she had the door slammed in her face.
A Facebook post from the Howick Local Board asking people to stop the practice quickly became a forum for complaints from commenters frustrated at the subdivisions going up around them - and the insufficient parking developers had provided.
A reminder you can't put cones out where it pleases to reserve parking on roads - including outside your house. This...
Posted by Howick Local Board on Tuesday, 4 December 2018
Letters had also been posted to homes with cones outside, but nothing had changed, Watson said.
People were not allowed to put out cones or bins to reserve parking, Auckland Transport spokesman Mark Hannah said.
"You do not own the parking spot outside your house – it is available for anyone to park."
Asked if there was any way to enforce a ban on using cones to reserve a park, Hannan said AT could "do a door knock or leaflet drop" if there was a problem in a particular street.