The parking mess near Ellis Sunday, January 12, 2014
The frustration expressed by today’s letter writer with the parking situation near Schenectady’s Ellis Hospital is palpable, and quite understandable. Clearly, a resident of the Glenwood-Parkwood neighborhood should be able to park close to his or her house for more than a couple hours during the day and not come out to find a $25 ticket.
The city’s solution to the parking problem caused by Ellis employees who hog the limited number of parking spaces on the residential streets closest to the hospital is a two-hour limit during the day. But as Linda Arduini opines in today’s letter, it’s hardly fair to residents of the neighborhood who might work nights and want to sleep during the day. And as residents in the Center Square area of downtown Albany used to complain (with regard to state employees stealing their spaces), some workers figure out how to game the limit by moving their cars to different spaces every time they get a coffee or meal break.
Schenectady needs a resident permit system in that neighborhood for this very reason. If it had one, more Ellis employees would be taking advantage of the free remote parking lot, with shuttle, the hospital provides for them but which many of them eschew, and the hospital wouldn’t have needed the controversial two extra floors it’s been given permission to build on its new Rosa Road parking garage.
It’s nice to know the city is at least occasionally enforcing the two-hour limit in that neighborhood, but that’s cold comfort for people like today’s letter writer.
Didn't they take over the Oneida school parking lot?
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
The two hour limit is worse than no solution. That councilman who got caught with the hooker wanted permit parking, after he left, that was the end of that. Extra floors on a parking garage just ruin what was once a beautiful residential area. It's too bad, there's no thought at all for the neighborhoods.
Not to sound horrible, but they live in a city. They have allies and garages. I can't control who parks in front of my house. If you want an empty street move to the suburbs.
That's why I think the two hour solution is bad, because now you can't leave your car in front of your own house all day. What good is that? The guy on the council lived on Glenwood, that's why he wanted permit parking, but most people arrive home after the Ellis workers have cleared out in the evening. A lot of the parking problems on those streets is due to some of the houses being broken up into too many units, and also for some reason people like to store junk cars off the alley and thus have no place but the street for their usable vehicles. I do not understand when people with garages fill them up with crap and then whine about having no place to put their cars.
the owner of the home should get parking tags with the tax bill, enough to cover the number of rentals per parcel and they can be used by the renters if they have a vehicle....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
On these blocks there are no driveways nor garages. Ellis employees should have to park at the Hillside Avenue lot. Meanwhile on Rosa Rd where property values have tanked Ellis is building a 5 story garage. But not for employees? This was rejected several times by both planning and BZA and they kept coming back. Another instance where the Gazetto was correct but too late on the issue.
There aren't driveways, there are alleyways behind the houses, and frequently a garage as well. So people have space for sometimes up to four cars, in the back, but some people like to keep the whole yard instead of putting parking at the end, and some people like to get themselves a giant vehicle that won't fit in any garage, and then compete for the on street spaces. No lie, there was one dork over on Glenwood parking his humvee on the sidewalk. Seriously, go ride along East Alley or especially Center Alley sometime, and see all the crap and junk cars some people keep back there. Maybe the two-hour parking non-solution was just a ploy to get yet another big, ugly, eyesore parking garage approved. Those glaring lights stay on all night long, all year round. I knew a couple who lived on Parkwood, they liked to sit out on their upstairs porch on summer evenings, that parking garage behind Stewart's ruined that, who wants to look at that? They moved. Aren't the parking issues less from the hospital itself, and more from all the other stuff that went up on the same site, like a nursing home and a "medical arts" building? It seems like they could've scattered those things around a bit more, and it would've been better for the neighborhoods. Too bad we don't have people in planning and zoning who can head off these foreseeable problems.
Logged
On these blocks there are no driveways nor garages. Ellis employees should have to park at the Hillside Avenue lot. Meanwhile on Rosa Rd where property values have tanked Ellis is building a 5 story
