Violators Will Be Towed
Determined to keep the blocks of Washington Ave East of Tucker as an unfriendly 4-lane highway, the city is threatening towing for parking on the street:
Ever since parking was allowed on the 1000 block and the Southern half of the 1100 bock the city has insisted, foolishly, on clearing the street for a morning and afternoon rush. At first it was only an hour but it didn’t take long for it to be two hours in the AM and two in the PM. So from 7am-9am and from 4pm-6pm nobody can park on the street between 10th and Tucker. The blocks East of Tucker are no parking 24/7.
For a couple of years now the city has been ticketing people parking in these spaces and presumably blocking the mad rush of people heading both East & West on Washington. People ignore the restriction and park there anyway. So recently the city taped notes on the meters to alert people not to park there during these maddening rush periods. The problem with the notes is that they are taped to the meters. Taped! We are a real city right? The notes also don’t mention the no parking times are only Monday-Friday.
Restaurants such as Kitchen K, Mosaic, Beso, The Dubliner, Mizu Sushi Bar (as well as other businesses) don’t need to have their customers chased away from 4pm-6pm. An early dinner al fresco at Kitchen K, Mosaic & Beso is ruined by having cars and buses flying by in the lane next to your table. A row of parked cars serves as a nice barrier between traffic and enjoying dinner.
Ticketing cars during this period was bad enough — now they are going to start towing? This is bad public policy! We need to extend on-street parking to the Eads Bridge to support retail along Washington Ave, not have it disappear for four hours each weekday. Towing cars will really endure so many people to Washington Ave.
I can’t say if the restrictions are needed or not, but I give the city credit for doing two things, enforcing (apparently) an existing regulation/restriction and trying to give people who park additional notice of the increased enforcement.
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Laws, rules and regulations without enforcement are essentially worthless – see valet parking! If the rules say “No Parking, Tow Away Zone”, there must be a good reason for the restriction, so it does little good if there’s even one vehicle blocking the lane – towing is the only viable option.
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And if there’s not a good reason, get the restrictions changed. But Steve, you can’t have it both ways. Either we enforce all parking restrictions or we enforce none – selective enforcement is a much worse abuse of government power than fair enforcement!
Items such as this, coupled with the LEAD story in last night’s news about the abundance of trash that STILL remained after Saturday’s Missouri-Illinois game, is not good PR. And then having folks get killed over fast-food is not the path to having a successful city.
East of 10th, not Tucker for the no parking 24/7.
Maybe Amimee Mokwa is seeking a new ride, something with a little more horsepower and style. The “system” can’t work unless we all pull together. :-
Nothing clears up a city street like having a tow truck needling it’s way in to pick up a car parked parallel to the curb. Brilliant!
And the tape over the Avery 5160 label screams in volumes about Saint Louis’ commitment to frugality and economic conservatism.
Now, everyone grab a black permanent marker, and rise up in revolt…
I havent really checked, but it seems that the meters dont PROMINENTLY show that parking is FREE on the weekends.
In Tempe, AZ they had nice big stickers on each meter that said “Free Parking on Sunday” Cant we do that?
“Now, everyone grab a black permanent marker, and rise up in revolt…”
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Wouldn’t that be funny! It’s tempting….
I don’t know the area very well but this is a sure sign that people in your city government (probably department of public works) are still of the mindset that streets are for moving cars as fast as possible through an area. (automobile sewers) Instead the focus should be on utilizing streets to support the area, by letting people park and become pedestrians who in turn can become customers.
What are the proper channels to end this restriction on parking? As a business owner I can tell you it is a big problem
for our clients. It is hard enough convincing suburbanites to come Downtown without getting them ticketed or towed.
Our only option has been to validate parking in the Renaissance parking garage.
i catch the bus across from the former good works at 9th & washington, and gaze at the new tenant setting up, wondering how long they’ll last with no street parking. traffic is fluid. if washington is clogged, it will go elsewhere.
retail customers are more fluid, if there’s no parking, they’ll flow into the seas of asphalt in the suburbs.
i think i’ll let my fingernails get a little longer this month…
Jennifer, like pretty much everything else in city government, the professional staff recommends and the elected officials have the final say. Get to know your alderman – if they want something changed, usually something changes, whether it makes sense in the bigger picture or not.
Have you called Kacie and Phillis about this?
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It’s about the worst idea ever. When I get off work I generally want to come downtown and PARK on Washington Avenue. It’s very relaxing having a beer after and it would be nice if the City valued my patronage of downtown establishments, instead of treating me as second class compared to county residents who are in a mad rush to leave!
Reality check – Thanks to past stupid decisions, our lovely Convention Center is a very effective barrier to traffic trying to access the MLK bridge. Convention Plaza, aka Delmar Boulevard, USED to offer a direct connection, but since the CC extends for four solid blocks, from Cole to Washington, guess what, a lot of traffic wants to use Washington, to, among other things, access both the Eads and the MLK bridges. In many other cities, traffic flows under their convention centers – it ain’t pretty, but it avoids the funnel effect that happens here. Sure, it costs more, but it also avoids a lot of unintended consequences. The same thing also happens, to a lesser degree, in the block to the south, on St. Charles, where it’s been chopped in several places.
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As a traffic engineer educated me many years ago, traffic is like water, it has to go somewhere. If we decide to reduce the capacity on Washington (by keeping the parking 24/7), will Locust, Olive, Pine and Chestnut be able to handle the increased traffic? Can we convince more people to use Cole, and to a lesser degree, Market, by timing THEIR signals better? Drivers aren’t stupid – they’ll find a better option if it’s offered to them. The only reason people continue to use Washington east of Tucker is because it remains the best choice among a limited choice of bad options. Unfortunately, having rush hour parking restrictions is a necessary evil in many older urban areas, and it beats the engeineers’ choice, eliminating parking completely. It all boils down to balancing competing demands and whose ox gets gored . . .
First off, have you even tried to contact the City Treasurer about this? He is an elected official and in charge of ALL PARKING METERS. Try calling his office first.
Also, this may be a temporary thing due to the different construction and the highway 40 project.
Stop being so knee jerk, it is getting very old. That is why people do not listen to you very much any more. You used to make sense.
As Jane Jacobs summed up in Dark Age Ahead, much of traffic engineering is pseudoscience; lots of rule-of-thumbs and “that will never work”, but with little empirical evidence to backup.
I think the analogy of traffic to gas is more correct than water. Auto traffic expands to fill the space it is given. Adding capacity usually attracts drivers who could otherwise find a slightly less convenient route, and it encourages more unnecessary vehicle trips on a given route.
Without the extra lanes on Washington in rush hour, people will spread out and find a way. The downtown grid has 4-5 other good options going either direction. Drivers who are taking marginally necessary trips may make the calculation not to take that route. Some people may make the calculation to start taking Metro more often or bike.
A related problem is the city preventing customer parking in front of small businesses. For example, in front of the new-ish Lebanese restaurant on Olive between 7 and 8th, there is no on-street customer parking because its reserved for delivery and couriers, who deliver mainly to the Laclede Building across the street. All around that block there is goo gobs of street space with no active business storefront. But that’s where the delivery parking has always been. Always will be I guess.
As someone who works on the 900 block of Washington, I can’t wait for the day when meters arrive. All of the pretty flowers in the world can’t keep the the sidewalks on Washington east of 10th from being hostile and lifeless. Remember when boosters were crowing about a downtown home furnishings district? We heard so much hype about how places like Good Works would make downtown a regional draw for shoppers, but no one even considered giving them the much-needed on-street parking that could have extended the life span of the store. Maybe after a few more ribbon cuttings at that space we’ll get some action.