Illegally Parked Delivery Vehicles

I'm sure this kind of thing has come up before but couldn't find anything on a brief search.

Encountered a lorry delivering to tesco here yesterday (where the taxi is parked in the photo):

https://goo.gl/maps/KxPgTZf55XF2

(near the junction of Commercial Street and Whitechapel)

Double red lines, in a bus stop, blocking the cycle path.

Ended up having a word with the driver, who was actually super polite and friendly. He said he was very sorry, but Tesco force them to park there, and they do in fact get regularly fined but Tesco just pay the fine. So I'm mad at tesco rather than the guy.

So not only do tesco build a supermarket that requires illegal parking for deliveries, but hold the law regarding it in total contempt that they consider paying the occasional fine an acceptable loss and refuse to change their behaviour, sending cyclists potentially into conflict with fast moving traffic, often with them being blocked from exiting safely due to the bollards.

What can one do about this?

Can you get details about who's been fined via an FOI request from the council?

Adverse publicity is the best method to change a company's behaviour. If you can make a big enough stink on social media they may change their ways. Get Jeremy Vine wobbling past there on his bike and use plenty of cameras and hey presto!

This comes up again and again (enough that there have been court cases over whether parking fines are tax deductible as businesses say they are unavoidable).

The business' stance is usually that parking fines are just a cost of doing business in that location and so just take the hit. It's become an even bigger issue since the explosion of all the Tesco Express, etc as they tend to be on busy streets with no parking and no loading bay.

The only way seems to be social media pressure/pester local council/MP (although that's probably not going to work at the moment) to pressure them.

They would have needed to explain how they would service the store in the planning application. You might be able to find that online and see what they stated they would do, certainly parking on a red route wouldn't have been acceptable.

This is an issue I've come across a few times. Whether or not a planning application is required depends largely on whether there's a change of use or any kind of alteration to a building associated with it. As the large building this shop is in probably simply had some kind of mixture of 'A' uses (see a full list here) approved on the ground floor. This might have been before it was known that Tesco would be a tenant, and even if that had been known, the planning process might not have picked up the issue of Tesco's delivery practices.

Needless to say, as in most modern buildings with a large footprint, especially one located on two major strategic routes, there should have been some rear access for this, but it appears that none was provided. There is some rear access servicing to the Ibis Hotel next door in Pomell Way, but my impression is that these are separate buildings, and that there is none to the building Tesco is in, Tyne Street being much too narrow, of course. Looking back on Google StreetView's useful history feature, it seems that the Tesco was in there from the building's completion, and that there were never any loading bays for the new building. That's fine, in a sense--as far as I know, there's no obligation on authorities to provide such facilities for shops.

The problem of Tesco's tactics in forcing authorities to provide them (hitting them where they're most sensitive, by impeding traffic flow) is compounded by their insistence on using large articulated lorries to deliver even to smaller shops. One scheme that's been planned on the A10 Kingsland Road at the junctions with Stamford Road and Tottenham Road is to provide a full-length loading bay by closing the aforementioned two junctions (retaining cycle access and getting rid of the stupid central island that was put in during the Dalston development of the failed bus station years ago, but still not a good scheme at all), because the relatively new Tesco Metro nearby had had its delivery lorries parked there in a smaller though legit 20-minute loading bay for a long time (someone told me a few years ago how long they usually take, but I can't remember; I think it's often for longer than 20 minutes). There's a different situation at Clapton Pond, where there's a Tesco Metro next to Palm 2. When the loading bay there has been full, I've seen Tesco lorries wait for at least ten minutes (then I really had to go) on the double red lines north of the loading bay. I'm sure others could add examples from all over the place, those are just two I've seen.

Unfortunately, I think that there aren't really any powers under traffic legislation to take very effective enforcement action against this kind of behaviour. IANAL so that may be nonsense, and perhaps there are powers in other areas of law.

The business model for these places is that they maximise shelf space by having almost no/the absolute minimum of space that's not the actual retail environment.

What this means is that there's not store room, there's a staging room but stuff comes off the lorry and onto the shelves - means they can have a wider choice than smaller places that had to hold stock, and they can respond to demand very quickly, but they absolutely have to have the lorry every 24 hours, and fuck the parking ticket. Needless to say a smaller grocery doesn't have the logistical machine that this sort of thing requires, so it's a very strong competitive advantage for the super-store chains.

Yes, although I do believe they don't actually need the whole lorry but that smaller vehicles would do if they didn't want one vehicle with one driver to visit multiple shops.

Exactly right about the way they undermine local business. I know someone who ran a very viable shop but couldn't maintain it within weeks of a Sainsbury's Local opening very close to him. They're probably not quite as bad as Tesco, but their strategy of opening smaller shops of their own to drive other smaller shops out of business has been getting up my nose for some time now.

Multiple smaller vans require multiple drivers, a much higher cost - also you'd need somewhere on the outskirts of London to use as a hub for logistics, one HGV can come down from the Midlands where land and labour is cheap, tour the stores and return, one driver, one vehicle.

Of course, that more drivers, more vehicles, and more distribution centres would be more expensive is what I meant to imply as the cause of why they don't want them.

Larger companies try to dominate increasingly larger areas from increasingly fewer sites. That's one of the major problems with them.

Is it that a big a deal? Just go round him.

Similar problem on Regent's St. Every morning from 7 til 9 there are enough delivery vehicles parked on the left hand side of the southbound side of the road that it causes the lane to be effectively un-useable which causes congestion on one of the most important streets in London. None of them ever get ticketed, I guess the stores need their stuff but it's pretty fucking selfish all-round.

Sainsbury gave a depot at J26 on the M25, 600 x 120m, for deliveries to supermarkets in London & satellute towns, north of the Thames. There is a similar one near Greenwich, (don't know the precise location, as I never worked there).
The other supermarket chains have similar London-peripheral set ups.

Is it that a big a deal? Just go round him.

There's a reason roads have double red lines.

The guy is parked in a segregated cycle lane. If you turn left onto that road you have traffic merging who are turning right, effectively putting you into a position of a potential head on collision. If you go straight into the cycle lane before noticing the lorry parked there, you are then trapped behind bollards.

The guy is parked in a segregated cycle lane.

Is that still there/back again? StreetView from June 2016 shows the very short bit of cycle lane, StreetView from September 2016 doesn't show it any more. Perhaps it's back--I don't know, as even though I rode past the other day, I wasn't paying attention. :)

Yeah I got confused looking at street view - but yes it is.

I also got an email back from the council today who I sent a complaint to.

They said it's TFL not them. Back to square one.

Tesco's have a hub in Leybourne just off the M20 south east of london. that one only services south/south east/ a bit of east london. they have others placed around the other sides which service the rest. The drivers are only allowed to travel on certain roads to get to their destinations as well and certainly in SE London theres a few stores that are only accessible via a circuitous route and the vehicles need to be in and out within a certain timeframe overnight/early morning.

HGVs are used because whilst servicing the smaller shops in the centre, the drivers will also have delivered to larger stores on the way in and back out in order to maximise their day. as re-iterated above they cant have smaller and more vans on the roads bacuase of the much higher cost. also (and im not sure of the answer to this) is one HGV making a daily drop to multiple shops better environmentally than multiple vans each visiting less shops?

there is also the issue that whatever the size of the vehicle delivering, they are still going to park in that spot and be there for approximately the same amount of time and cyclists will still have to go around them.

Also its not uncommon for the JIT technology to be TOO good in that the system tells the hub they need X delivered so this get loaded onto a lorry going the right way that has other stops. then the same store reports it needs Y delivered and so that gets loaded onto a different lorry going to slightly different set of stores but you can frequently arrive at a store as the driver and have to wait for the other tesco driver to finish delivering before they can get in to drop theirs.