One of the most common topics within the Letters to the Editor section of the Chapel Hill News are various complaints about how various urban practices are ruining Downtown Chapel Hill. Yesterday’s rant from Perry Deane Young complaining that parking was not free and available directly in front of a recent yard sale he attended is quite representative of the genre:
It was a balmy Saturday morning in Chapel Hill, a relaxed time for farmers’ markets and yard sales. Several of us had parked along Kenan Street for an interesting sale in the historic building on the corner.If there were “No Parking” signs, I certainly didn’t see them. And even if there were, it was a Saturday and it was a yard sale, for God’s sake. [emphasis by blog poster]
While we were inside, an overzealous meter man gleefully wrote out $50 tickets and posted them on a dozen different windshields.
He goes on to state that the town of Chapel Hill enforcing its own regulations (during a yard sale!) is indecent and not in keeping with the “small-town considerate thing.”
As I was heading out for errands a little after 9 am yesterday morning, I decided to take a drive up and down Kenan St to see if Mr. Young had indeed been a victim of a poorly signed road. Alas, not so much. Driving south from Franklin to Cameron, there were four public “No Parking” signs in a stretch of less than 1000 feet. Driving north from Cameron to Franklin, there were two, including the one directly in front of the house I assume he was visiting, since the other three corners are filled with two businesses and a standard 1960-70ish triplex.
No Parking Sign (1 of 6 signs) on Kenan St
But did he have a choice? Yes. Less than 300 feet away from the Kenan/Cameron intersection are several metered spaces available for $1.25/hour, 8 AM – 6 PM Monday through Saturday, that are free at other times.
Metered Parking on Cameron Avenue
This particular episode is quite unremarkable except for the two assumptions that underpin the letter, and the indignation with which those assumptions are expressed. The two assumptions are:
1. Chapel Hill is a “small town” and should behave according to some Mayberry-esque schema of law enforcement to fit that profile.
2. People should be able to park wherever they want, whenever they want, on public streets, for free.
Despite the protestations of some that Chapel Hill is a “village” of sorts, the hard fact of the matter is that Chapel Hill/Carrboro combine to comprise a small-sized American city or large town of approximately 77,000 people even if you do not count the on-campus students. Throw them in and the community is pushing 90,000 residents with a larger daytime population due to commuting in for employment. This is not a small town, nor has it been one for some time. For further perspective, the City of Asheville has 83,000 residents in the city limits.
Which brings us to the second point- the UNC campus and its greater environs, including Franklin St, is the Central Business District of this small city, and Kenan St is directly attached to it. One of the principal reasons why Franklin St is so full of activity is that it places a premium on access for pedestrians over cars, and this prerogative is defended first and foremost by ticketing cars that don’t play by the rules.
If you like downtown and the vitality it provides, then you need to be onboard with paying for the valuable public right of way your 2500-3000 pounds of personal machinery takes away from everyone else when it is stored downtown, and not parking on the streets where the town has considered it suboptimal to the community for anybody to park. Otherwise you wind up with a classic Tragedy of the Commons and heavily congested streets that are bad for business due to low turnover, and more dangerous for pedestrians.