Australia may increase standard car parking spaces as huge vehicles dominate the streets

Cars in a council park in Sydney fail to fit between the lines. The standard size of spaces may be increased to accommodate the popularity of enormous vehicles. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

Parking spaces in Australia may soon become bigger as a response to the nation’s love affair with SUVs and large cars, but planners fear parking lots are at risk of collapse under the weight of increasingly enormous vehicles.

For the past few decades, the standard size for car spaces on streets and in parking lots has been 5.4 metres long and 2.4 to 2.6 metres wide – big enough to allow a Ford Falcon or Holden Commodore to park comfortably.