March
2002
From
the Editor: My kingdom for a parking space
Okay.
We at the Trenton Downtowner spend a lot of time cheerleading the
City of Trenton because we believe in it and we feel very strongly
about its regeneration and its return to greater respectability.
Rah, rah.
And
so it is at this time that I rechannel my passion for Trenton's
future success into venting my purpling spleen at the matter colloquially
known as the "parking situation" in downtown Trenton.
For
crying out loud. Trenton: Fix. This. Problem.
I'm
not a native of Trenton (I grew up in Hamilton Square); in fact,
I don't even live here. I commute to the city, often four or five
days a week, often at odd hours like 10:30 in the morning, to take
care of my responsibilities to the paper. So I can say without reservation
that there aren't enough parking spaces to accommodate the people
who work in and visit the downtown. But that's not news.
It's
not particularly newsworthy if I go on about what it's like to sit
in line outside the Trenton Commons parking lot, waiting to get
in because the lot is full. On the global scale of hardships, me
driving to the upper level of the Commons lot at the instruction
of the gate attendant, only to find that there are no spots, that
I now have to find some way to back out, and that all the spots
that might have opened up downstairs now belong to someone who has
arrived after me, well, it's somewhere below a cholera epidemic
and somewhere above losing the dizzy bat race at a Thunder game.
But
the point is, it's an exercise in bad faith. Yes, it's easy for
me to sit here in my suburb and rail at the city to create more
public parking, without having to worry about where the land is
going to come from, or who's going to foot the bill for new parking
lot or garage construction.
Yet,
if I were a business owner, spending eighteen hours a day trying
to help make Trenton a better place to live and visit, I think I'd
be pretty upset to learn that the city found this particular problem
simply too tough a nut to crack. Or to bother trying to crack.
What's
more fun is trying, and failing, to find a spot on the street. Especially
if you are heading east on Front Street and the Commons lot is closed.
I hope your destination wasn't Johnston Jewelers on West State Street
because, brother, it's going to be a number of turns, one-way streets,
and traffic lights before you're over that way again. And that's
even if you know which turns to take.
This
month's feature is on eating lunch in downtown Trenton, and it's
no coincidence that this is the month the parking situation finally
got to me. When you can't get into a restaurant because it's too
busy, that's a shame. When you can't get to a restaurant because
you can't drive downtown and back to work in under an hour, that's
an embarrassment for a city that claims to be interested in building
new business.
This
is a problem that can and must be solved. And frankly, I don't know
what's the delay.
-Joe
Emanski
