Mecklenburg County's Park and Recreation department along with City Traffic Engineering and the Lat Purser Company are trying to figure out how to address the parking demands for the access to the Four Mile Greenway at the corner of Rea Road and Bevington Place.
The trouble: Greenway visitors are are using the Shops at Piper Glen parking lot, which is putting a crunch on available parking for the shopping center customers.
City Traffic Engineering tried adding ten spaces earlier this year on the south side of the street, and the results were nearly catastrophic.
So now Park and Rec is thinking of building a parking lot. Trouble is it will cost about 200k. Lat Purser the shopping center owner has offered to donate 20k to the project but in the mean time they are towing cars.
So I'll offer a simpler solution:
First, the 25 available spaces are on the opposite side of the street from the Greenway. I have no idea why, except that someone wasn't thinking. So move the street side parking to the other side (south side) of the street, you know... the same side the Greenway is on! D'oh!
Second, the current spaces are parallel parking. I'm pretty sure that only 1 in 5 drivers in Charlotte can parallel park, so use angled parking instead.
Two changes simple easy and the only cost I'll guess is in the paint and labor to make some stripes, and you get all of this:
54 parking spaces on the same amount of road frontage that you had 25.
With cars parking on the park side, its safer and doesn't impede traffic.
The blind spot for cars exiting the shopping center and turning left onto Bevington is removed.
The danger of car doors opening into the street is removed.
Bonus, you also gain an additional 100+ feet of road to work with, just by changing the street side. So in theory you could put one hundred spaces.
Plus, you can always add the parking lot in the future.
Should Bevington not be wide enough for angle parking you can widen the road way by five feet without rebuilding the sidewalk.
Bonus, add parking meters to recoup future parking lot costs.
Site plan for the proposed parking lot is here:
Mecklenburg Park and Rec page for the Four Mile Greenway is here:
2 comments:
All of your suggestions make sense. Who is the parking lot benefitting? If it is Lat Purser, why don't they foot the bill for any additional parking? Another suggestion...open some parking at Johnston Road. That should alleviate the congestion at Bevington...and put that parking recommendation on the greenway website for new users of the greenway.
Come to the City Council meeting tomorrow night (Monday, Marh 21st 6pm at the Gov. Center and suppport those of us who are against the parking lot...we have sited the same solutions you have...plus others. Falling on deaf ears. The new parking lot will make it hazardous to maneuver both cars and people.
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