My flat opens on to a car park. The entire car park has a maximum 48 hour stay. Half of the spaces, 2 rows on the south side, have no further restriction.
There’s a sign stating that M-F 0830-1700 all spaces marked with an S are only available for use by the employees of the building on the North side. I’ve been here 6 years, when I first arrived all the spaces on the North 2 rows were marked with a clear white S. Now although the sign is still there, the "S"s have not been repainted for a long long time, to the point where they are barely decipherable If I didn’t know they were there I wouldn’t spot them, and knowing that they are there I can only make out the faint outline of some of the bends on most of them.
I have seen tickets but am not sure whether that is for the 48 hour thing, the S thing or any other reason. It is very common that there are no spaces free on the South side, there’s a road with 1 hour parking about 5 minutes walk away which I go to and remind myself to pick up the car, see if there’s space, if not go find another 1 hour parking spot. Would you park on the North side instead?
Is the business located in the building on the north side still in operation? If it is, why would you think faded parking marks somehow means a posted sign doesn’t matter anymore?
If it’s owned by the business next to the lot (which the sign seems to imply) then they can set up whatever policy they wish. They can simply not allow anyone to park there if they want to.
I only know they’re there because I know they’re there. As far as I can see for people who don’t know the layout of the car park it would be completely unfeasible to crack down on them because for all practical purposes none of the spaces are marked. The sign doesn’t indicate the location of the supposedly marked bays.
That’s a typical example,. If you squint you can just about make out the faint outline of the "S"s but if you didn’t know they were there you would never spot them.
I imagine if as a visitor to your town I was trying to find a place to park, and I saw a sign like that, I would look for the 'S’s and be able to find them, although barely. I would then think that maybe I would be okay parking there, but would probably be paranoid and see if I could find somewhere else. Considering that the sign is up, I would hesitate to recommend that you park there, without at least researching your local parking laws.
I would avoid parking there because private car parks have such huge leeway to impose fines that it would be a huge hassle to fight them (I’m also in the UK, BTW). You’d end up checking on your car for tickets as much as you would by parking round the corner for an hour.
U.K. Person here. In theory it should be thrown out if they’re not clearly marked. But I fought a parking ticket I got outside my building. The lines hadn’t been repainted in years and were covered with several inches of dead leaves. I lost because the court said I should have known they were there because I lived there. On the positive side, the council finally cleared all of the dead leaves and repainted the lines within a week.
If you get a ticket, the best possible outcome is that you get to spend time and money fighting a parking ticket. The worst is that you spend the time and money fighting it and lose.
So the real question is how likely you are to get a ticket. You can then weight that against the costs of fighting it and the likelihood of success. Short of grasping that nettle yourself, you need to lure someone else into parking there and observe the results closely. Do you have a hated relative you could invite to visit?
