As someone who lives a few hundred feet from the 50th St. LRT station, I can appreciate the ire shared by neighbors. For instance, we have driveways, often Model T narrow, instead of alleys in this area. Just about every day, someone parks just enough into mine to make it impossible to swing into or out of the driveway, especially with cars parked solidly across the street as well.
How to rectify the problem fairly is no small problem. At first blush, Parking Permits would seem to be the obvious choice. However, permits are *extremely* unpopular among the people I have contacted. Not one person thinks that they should have to pay a premium to use their own street. One to permanently attach to each car you want to park streetside. Plus, you'll need another for "floaters", i.e., the Roto-Rooter guy, and another how many for guests or family? Most consider it a form of taxation or, at best, a penalty for living in the city. At the same time, the City, looking at increased work to issue more permits, has also untimely raised the permit fee from $10 to an annual $25 per vehicle. Even understanding the current budget woes, this would appear to be another attempt at "zero balance" fee-for-service designed to recoup all costs associated with services. Several residents have pointed out that doing so amounts to double taxation. And, I have a hard time arguing against that point. The only other option (besides doing nothing and telling residents to live with it) is to enact hourly restrictions. But that has it's downside also. Would posting 2 or 3-hour parking limits help? Probably not. And over what time frame? The peak in on-street parking is happening during the mid-day and evening hours, not during normal rush-hour peaks as one might expect. I suspect that many of those riders are going downtown for appointments, shopping, meals, or entertainment. It would appear that many are returning before the time on their transit pass runs out as many of those "midday" cars are turning over within 3 hours. Pushing the parking to adjoining blocks will only serve to irritate those folks, who will react the same, pushing available spaces farther out until eventually people just won't ride. Remember this will happen up and down the line. And that does nothing for the LRT. As Ron mentioned, businesses, present and future also need parking for their own customers and employees. Unfortunately, because of the extremely short-sighted "no park-and-ride lots in the city" mindset from early on, it's going to take the wisdom of Solomon and a lot of public persuasion and education to find a workable solution. What a mess. The only good thing about the excess parking is that now, traffic on 43rd, the new neighborhood throughway, has slowed to a crawl as opposing vehicles jockey to get around each other on the street. (And to the person who parked the 3/4-ton Chevy dual-axle pickup two feet from the curb on Saturday, it was a white parcel truck that left your driver's side mirror dangling as he tried to finesse past your truck and the Chevy Caprice--also thoughtfully skewed--across from you.) Doug Walter Nokomis East Ron Leurquin wrote: -> Now for my neighborhood. 50th and Hiawatha. Those residents -> have come to rely on the street being available for parking. -> Now comes the LRT station and the drivers that come to it, -> park, ride downtown. Now there is less on street parking -> for the people that were already there. Now lets add the -> possibility of a new food establishment at that corner -> without adequate parking. If I lived near there I would not -> be favorable to the new food establishment, or that thrilled -> with the idea that I would have to pay for a parking permit -> to park in front of my house. REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
