Parking Horrors

Yesterday, I went out to run some errands, and when I came back, the parking situation was, in a word, nightmarish. I have never, ever, ever seen it this bad, including on a Saturday night, when parking spots are few and far between. There were cars parked on the wrong side of a street where you can only park on one side, basically rendering that two-way street a one-way street. In fact, I had to back up down another street to let a car get by. We should have both been able to get by at the same time. I noticed that most of those cars got tickets, which is good.

I managed to snag a legal spot, but only because I stalked a guy and his little girl. They were walking down the street, so I yelled out my window and asked him if he was leaving and had a parking spot I could take. He was super nice, told me where his car was, and then came over to me to let me know he was going to be a few minutes because he had to change her. The time I spent waiting for them to leave, which was probably about 7 minutes, was certainly time well spent.

Parking in my neighborhood is always an issue. There's been debate recently on my neighborhood listserve about changing the parking regulations, but I feel like mostly it's debate, and no one will actually take the effort to change anything, including myself. Right now, my street is zoned so that if you don't have a permit, you can only park on the street for 2 hours between the hours of 8 am and 7 pm, Monday-Friday. Ideally, it would be a 24 hour, 7 day a week zone, with actual enforcement. It's possible under District law to change the zoning, block by block, so basically, every block needs to change in order for the changes to have an effect.

I think I'm going to go to my ANC meeting next month. I'm hoping it will be like the Stars Hollow town meetings on Gilmore Girls.