Dear Editor:
The proposed Washington Street re-design that the RBA Group presented at the Oct. 8 City Council meeting requires that all of the angled parking north of 8th Street be converted to back-in angled parking. Stated in their final report “the parking maneuver is fast and can be completed in an average of 6 seconds (versus 30 seconds to parallel park).” But there isn’t any parallel parking uptown now because of the narrower sidewalks!
Reverse angle parking is actually a type of parallel parking since one must first signal when slowing to approach the space, then pull past the space and then back into it on an angle. While this maneuver may be unfamiliar and more difficult than going front-in, pulling out becomes easier. What is required for this to work on a busy main street is that the cars and buses in the traffic behind you must patiently stop and wait to allow you time and space to complete your maneuver.
On Willow Avenue, between 11th and 13th Streets, this back-in angled parking was instituted last August on the east side of the street only. (I observed that most of the cars were not parked in line with the angled space.) As a general rule, back-in angled parking should be implemented on side streets first because it is most useful on non-arterial streets where the calming of speeding is needed since it slows down the traffic flow by the sheer act of forcing the traffic to come to a halt so a vehicle can park. It is useful around schools and bicycle friendly. If the community can accept this type of parking, after their learning curve, it could be expanded to major streets.
Many cities are dabbling in this type of parking, but not all are successful. In Bethlehem, Pa., they tried back-in parking on their Main Street, but reversed it to front-in parking because, “It was clear the back-in angle parking was a negative to bringing people to lower Main Street. It’s the right thing to do to help the merchants,” according to lehighvalleylive.com. “We did have quite a few of our customers get stressed out with back-in parking.”
In order to prevent headlights of reverse angled parking vehicles from shining into peoples’ homes across the street, one side of the street usually retains parallel parked vehicles to block those headlights. The RBA Group plan has reverse angle parking on both sides of the street, so lights shining into homes will be a problem on both sides of Washington Street.
Also noted in the RBA Group report: “Parking signage should state that idling of engines is forbidden. Emissions aimed at the sidewalks affects pedestrians passing by.” (This could be a problem in the winter when cars need to be warmed up before moving.) “Wheel stops were considered but not recommended because of anticipated conflicting sweeping and snow removal operations.” Since most people cannot judge distance when backing in, pedestrians look out.
Mary Ondrejka