Parking is a pain in many places, but in downtown Glenwood Springs, it’s been positively perplexing.
The problem began three weeks ago when, as part of a series of traffic-calming recommendations from a Florida consultant, the city opted to have drivers back into diagonal parking spaces on a two-block strip of Cooper Avenue.
The theory is that backing in is safer because doors and trunks open toward the sidewalk and drivers then pull out head-first into traffic.
But confused drivers turned the test blocks – with their cockeyed lines facing away from the direction of traffic – into a pandemonium of parked cars. The vehicles faced both directions at odd angles, painted stripes be damned.
City hall was inundated with complaints and calls to put the stripes back the way they were.
“When you make traffic changes, the first thing drivers do is lose their minds and think the world is going to come to an end,” said Glenwood Springs Police Chief Terry Wilson.
For the time being, Wilson’s parking-enforcement duties are centered on education rather than tickets.
Wilson hit downtown with fliers before the white paint was dry on the new lines. Then, arm-waving city employees were stationed on Cooper Avenue to dispense advice on how best to back into a space – basically “stop, signal, turn the wheel and back up.”
The city put up “Back-in angle parking” signs, but drivers complained they couldn’t see them or didn’t know what that meant.
Creature-of-habit drivers saw the new lines and simply darted across the oncoming lane of traffic to pull into the parking spaces nose first.
On Tuesday, city traffic officials strung orange tape on plastic poles in the middle of Cooper Avenue to stop drivers from doing that. For the first time, all the cars were back bumper to curb, but drivers were not necessarily happy.
“Everyone complains. They think it’s ridiculous,” said Beth Bair, manager of the Good Health store on Cooper Avenue.
Salt Lake City; San Francisco; Santa Barbara, Calif.; and Pottstown, Pa., have some back-in angle parking. It is popular in Florida, where Glenwood Springs’ traffic consultant, Dan Burden, is based.
And Grand Junction is headed in the same, initially puzzling, direction. The city is designing a downtown 7th Street makeover that is slated to include backward parking.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
