Residents on Grove Street in Burlington say that an attempt to alleviate a confusing and difficult to navigate parking situation has backfired, causing more problems than it solved.
Grove Street residents Cindy Bragg, Cameron Capps, and Doug Ita all spoke during the public comment portion of Monday Night’s Burlington City Council meeting. The City Council at a previous meeting restricted parking on the street to one side, but Bragg says that not only is parking more inconvenient for people without driveways, it’s having another effect as well: drivers have been speeding down the road.
“Since you’ve put parking on only one side, it’s been a raceway,” Bragg said.
The City Council moved to make parking on the narrow street restricted to the south side after a Grove Street resident petitioned the council to change their original plans, which was to restrict parking on the north side. The majority of driveways on the street are on the south side, and the petitioner argued that parking on the north side would make it hard for cars pulling out of their drive ways to avoid hitting parked cars on the other side of the street. Bragg, Capps, and Ita all argued that parking on the south side wasn’t fair to the driveway-less residents on the north side of the street, who now have to cross the road–filled with speeding cars–and park their cars in front of other people’s homes.
Mayor Shane McCampbell told the residents he would personally visit the street with them later this week to assess the parking situation further.
