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Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

What’s wrong with parking on grass? Why do people feel a need to pave?

Parking on the grass kills the grass, and dead grass eventually turns into mud when it rains, and mud eventually gets your car stuck. People often use gravel to prevent this, which is permeable, but you need to add fresh gravel every year or so.

I have this childhood memory of parking spaces made of concrete tiles with holes in them, with grass growing through the holes. Now I finally know what they're for :)

Gravel is only permeable with permeable undersurface. This is usually not the case, because non-permeable plastics are used to prevent weed from growing in gravel area.

There are water permeable barriers that resist weeds too. It’s solvable.

Those surfaces are quite a bit more expensive than asphalt, so most companies won't put them in unless they are incentivized through something like a non-permeable surface tax.

True, it's up to the people involved. My point was more that it's possible

Thee are numerous drivable grass products specifically made for driving/parking on grass.

Really? I've looked for something like this in the past for my driveway, but come up empty handed. Are you able to share any of the product names with me? I would love to have something like this.

Apparently they're called "grass parking mats"

Here's an Australian product: https://www.grassreinforcement.com.au/

Here's another one: https://www.bunnings.com.au/cirtex-surepave-plastic-pavers_p...

It can also be called grass reinforcement mesh or grass pavers. Another cool approach is doing pavers with grass joints.

If you lay the gravel properly, (i.e. get it rolled when it's first laid), and give it a bit of cursory maintenance (raking it once a week), it should last a long time without you needing to add any more gravel, or at most adding a bag of gravel once a year.

Once it rains, that grass turns to mud and anyone without a 4x4 is hopelessly stuck.

You people must be terrible drivers or have a sufficiently liberal definition of "grass" to include most swamps.

Not to mention, having a grass lawn in the Bay Area is a major social taboo due to water conservationism. You get more props paving than planting in my neighborhood (as long as you pave expensively).

Pavement vs Lawn is a bit of a false dilemma, though. Nobody in SurfRider's "plant don't pave" campaign is advocating lawns. In fact, they advocate against lawns. There are low (or no) water, drought resistant, often native plants that will preserve the soil filter, which is crucial for a lot of reasons (storm overflows, sewage bottlenecks, pollution from runoff into the bay and ocean).

Also, pave-overs are illegal in San Francisco - the problem is that the law is generally unenforced. Enforcement is complaint driven, and there's a huge backlog.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Paved-over-S-F-yards-r...

Wait - you’re not allowed to park in your own driveway, even if not blocking the sidewalk? Am I reading this right? Enclosed garages only?

(I sort of understand not being able to convert lawn to concrete parking space, but this seems much more draconian).

A driveway is fine, but the rest of the front yard should be unpaved.

They advocate against lawns, and you can't park on typical "native" gardens (typically a lot of dirt, and some scrub brush), thus you are left with paving as the parking friendly eco-acceptable option. Or astroturf, but not sure how much better that drains than concrete.

Indeed parking on grass is the best solution for this problem. We learned it at our city planning course decades ago already. You some amount of concrete but not 100% as of now.

More work to maintain and there’s a risk of getting stuck in the mud after a rain.

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