View: Parking the 'Wrong Way' on Some Streets Shouldn't Be a Crime!

I live on the 2500 block of Alva, and have since late 1976, and have accordingly seen a fair amount of turnover among the residents hereabouts.  For awhile, the houses on each side of mine were rentals, lots of come-and-go there especially.  I got into the habit of greeting almost everyone who moved in on my block with the same piece of sage advice, because I invariably saw them parking their car in the street facing the wrong way, meaning with the driver's-side door alongside the curb.  My advice was, "They'll ticket you for that here."  

The advice was sage because it was true; you do get ticketed for parking "on the wrong side of the street" in E.C.  And I always gave the advice not just to be a good neighbor but to hopefully deny the city fathers the income from the citation, which must be the fundamental reason why the law is on our local books.  Because there is no other sane rationale for such an imbecilic one-size-fits-all statute.  

I grant the basis for the law in theory: parking on the wrong side of a two-way street requires that the motorist pull out directly into the oncoming lane when s/he leaves, clearly a hazard worth avoiding.  The problem is the great gap between traffic theory and roadway reality in E.C.  

The 2500 block of Alva, like all the other blocks of Alva, and indeed like most blocks of most streets further up the hillside than, say, the recycling center, are not two-way on the best day of their lives.  The great majority provide only a narrow, one-lane passageway between the rows of cars parked on each side.  In short, for all practical purposes these are one-lane streets which are not wide enough to permit actual two-way traffic.  

This means, quite simply, that whichever side of the street you are parked on, and whatever direction your car is facing, when you pull away from either curb you will be heading onto a one-lane street, and therefore directly into the path of any traffic that may be coming your way.  The idea of somehow preventing this by restricting your parking to one curb or the other, or one direction or the other, is as pointless as voting Republican in Berkeley.  

Because my neighbors' cars tend to eat up a fair amount of curb space, and because of the direction from which I nearly always arrive at my home, it would be vastly more convenient for me to be able to park on the "wrong" side, or on the right side but facing the "wrong" way, or however the law reads.  I'm guessing it would also be more convenient for a host of E.C. residents.

I don't think the city council would have to walk on water to write legislation that specifies that the "wrong way parking" statute does not apply to residential streets that are less than X number of feet wide; I'll let our elected officials work out the details.     

Unfortunately, my few dealings with E.C. city councilpersons have left me with the impression that the public's convenience appears on their Priorities list just after "learn to speak Cherokee," and that other than setting fire to them, there is probably no way to get them to take this issue seriously.

Well, there is, of course: the civic-minded and responsible approach, which involves devoting numerous hours of time to pestering and hectoring them at council meetings in a benign but inexhaustable manner, until they appease you just so you'll go away.

But that will require someone with far more persistence and determination, and a far less repellent personality, than I could bring to the cause.  I just hope there's somebody out there who fits the bill, has plenty of time to kill, and has to park in the street.  Onward!

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