In last week’s Paper, it was reported that the village Planning Board will consider whether to install parking meters at the municipal parking lot on Fair Street once paving and line-painting are complete. I write to express my sincere hope that the board will once again step away from the thoroughly unpopular idea of metering Cold Spring’s parking for all the reasons that this idea has been shot down in the past — and more.
As the merchants of Cold Spring are glad for good weather every weekend to welcome hikers and antique hunters to Cold Spring, the four-hour and five-hour parking durations on Main Street and the cross-streets provide the necessary mix of an invitation to stay (and spend) a while and the need to move these visitors on (or at least into some other space) so that others can have their chance. Why discourage these visitors with the additional cost and hassle of feeding meters or — much worse — dealing with a parking ticket when the meter expires?
And since the current plan seems to be to meter only those spaces at the edge of town (in the municipal lot), how much more trouble are we asking our visitors to deal with when they are running down Fair Street every few hours to put in additional payments or rushing to move their car before a meter expires? And why would someone pay to park at the edge of town when she could park right on or off of Main Street for free? This differential cost arrangement will only worsen the parking crunch in the downtown village, as drivers hunt ever more persistently and aggressively for the free spaces.
What are the locals supposed to do when snow is on the way and they are directed to put their cars in the municipal lot at the specified time? Remember last winter when the snow was up to people’s car doors in that lot and no one could back out for days? When do the meters kick back in? When the plows have finished their job (of pushing the snow up under people’s bumpers)? When the snow melts enough to drive safely away? When the driver of a legally snow-parked car gets around to moving his vehicle?
Please, village planners, no meters in the municipal lot — or anywhere else in Cold Spring.
Jacqueline Foertsch
Cold Spring
Installing parking meters on Main Street is the best, and only practical, way of improving access to parking in that business district. The 2008 Parking Committee, appointed by the Special Board for a Comprehensive Plan, recommended that pay and display type meters be installed on Main Street, Depot Square, and the Municipal lot, and projected the net income (after leasing expenses, maintenance, and additional enforcement) would amount to about $200,000 per year.
Parking meters have been proven in thousands of communities worldwide, over the past 80 years, to make spaces available by increased turnover.
Metering the municipal parking lot alone, given the increased traffic from hikers, is probably a good idea. Short term, the Village should also sell permits to Village residents to park in the Municipal lot (excepting snow days). The Municipal lot on Fair Street should not be a free overflow lot for residents; it is meant to be for visitors.
As a Main Street merchant, I think this is an excellent point about the parking meters and agree with Jacqueline that meters are not necessary nor are they desirable.
If you look at the big picture, parking is only an issue two days a week (Sat. and Sun.) and nine months of the year. January, February and March are pretty dead, even on weekends, and there are few tourists if any. So we are talking about less than 100 days a year, several hours a day, where there could be a potential problem.
Here are two simple things that could be done that would help matters immensely and that don’t cost anything. First, how about letting people park in all those prime spaces on central Main Street that are currently reserved for the part-time PD and other Village employees who don’t work on the weekends.
Second, a four-hour time limit is way too long, plus it is hard to enforce. It makes sense to put a two-hour limit on all those spaces that are now marked “4 hours” and make sure that the police ENFORCE the time limit. This would help to move people around while still giving them plenty of time to shop and eat.
Like I said, simple and cost effective.
If the Village has financial problems such that it doesn’t have enough money for its expenses, putting meters on every available space in town won’t make a difference. In fact, it will make matters worse because they will lose their biggest income stream which is coming from the commercial tax base on Main Street. Like every other municipality, the answer is never to cut expenses; rather, it’s to figure out ways to get more money from the citizens.