DM – got my laugh of the day thinking about you and the black Jetta.

I do think there is a reverse NIMBY ism. The common response is – so sorry – you shouldn’t have bought that house near the commercial area. Keep paying your property taxes but don’t expect anyone to care about your quality of life. Don’t question our plans to have a pedestrian friendly city with minimal parking available to discourage auto traffic. And remember , the rest of us have every right to drive to Taqueria and park in front of your house and any time we want.

The resident parking restriction is set up not only to help the residents of that street but also to funnel the car traffic into the metered spaces and the near by decks. If the cars park in those areas rather than on residential streets, we will have less safety concerns about cars running stop signs and driving too fast in the neighborhoods.

To me it is a double standard. Many Decaturites love to talk the walkability talk but too few actually walk (or bike) the walk. As I’ve said before – come down to LowPo during dinner hour . Check out the cars at Taqueria, on Fairview and around the Yoga Studio. Count how many cars have City of Decatur front plates.

Over and over I see Fairview and Northern crowded with parked cars when metered spaces in front of Sharian, Fabu and the Wells Fargo building are available . I’ m sure the decks at 335 and the Artisan have available spaces, too. Are we really ready to loosen the parking space requirements for new businesses ? We have excess parking, yet our own City residents don’t use it ? Why don’t more city residents walk to LowPo on a regular basis – or least walk the few blocks from the 335 deck? Do Decaturites embrace walkability in theory AND practice?

I now pretty strongly believe that part of the parking problem is the popularity of TDS and part of it is that Gateway was sectioned off from downtown to the south. The two combined causes a perfect storm of parking problems.

In all seriousness, LowPo or whatever that section of Ponce is called has some unique parking issues that the rest of town does not have. I hate going over there for that reason, even though I love the Marlay. I used to have to pick up my daughter from yoga over at the place behind Dancing Goats, and it was like the 5th or 6th circle of hell. I don’t know what the answer is over there.

If the patrons of TDS et al. would be willing to walk another block I don’t think they’d be parking in residents’ driveways, but, as it is, ….