Invasion Of The Extra Wide Handicapped Parking Spaces!

Prior to this morning in the City Hall Municipal Parking Lot (CHMPL), there were 11 metered parking spaces along the alley east of the lot's southern entrance/exit. 3 of those spaces were for handicapped parking. There were also no lines of any color for drivers or pedestrians to drive or walk over as they entered or exited the lot.

In that section there are now 4 handicapped parking spaces and just three regular spaces, all of them still metered. Unlike the former handicapped spaces, the new ones each take up the equivalent of two spaces.  Maybe this is an ADA requirement, I don't know.  It seems idiotic.  If I were a handicapped driver with a permit, I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't ever need or expect an empty space the width of a parking space on one side of my parked car.  But that's just me.

Handicapped space, empty space.  Handicapped
space, empty space.  Handicapped space, 
empty space...

More handicapped spaces, fewer meters.
Fewer meters, less revenue.  Less revenue, 
fewer fun times!

The least attractive spaces are the ones 
that the line marking company did not touch.

Where there were 11 spaces for vehicles to park, there are now just 7.  We have 4 fewer spaces, 4 fewer meters for the city to remove quarters from, and 4 fewer spaces which generate $10 parking tickets.  How much in revenue did the city forego by having those blue lines installed this morning?

I caught up with the pavement marking workers in the northeast corner of the lot as they were repainting the lines for the one handicap space found there.  Like the other new blue lined spaces, an adjacent metered space was consumed by blue lines extending from the original handicapped space.  The meter for that disappeared parking space will no longer contribute revenue for us in the form of quarters and $10 parking tickets.  That makes 5 metered spaces and meters vanished so that all handicapped vehicles parked in the lot can have enough room to fully open a door that is 15 or 20 feet long. 

One parking space refreshed, one removed.

I simply do not get it.

Of course, I asked as many questions of the fellow in charge of the line marking before he tired of me.  He told me that "Rob Perry and the commissioner showed me what they wanted done the other day.  They were here in the lot.  They told me it had to be done this way, and they needed to add another handicapped space to the three over there."

"They told you that all of the spaces next to the handicapped spaces needed to be striped over and that the blue lines needed to be in the entrance?"

"That's right, apparently it's a requirement now.  Hey, I just do what I'm told to do."

"Thanks, and have a good day."

Yesterday there were exactly 100 metered parking spaces in the CHMPL.  Now we have 95.  Why, you ask?  The answer is quite simple:  So that common, everyday cars possessing a handicap permit are ALWAYS able to occupy a parking space next to an empty space the size of a parking space, about 9 feet by 20 feet.  Some luckier handicapped drivers, depending on the space they find, will have wide, unoccupied spaces on both sides of their parked vehicles, spaces that once generated money revenue for the people of the City of Hudson, NY.  Sounds reasonable, don't it?

The same type of work on accessible spaces is in process in the Amtrak lot and the three other city lots; an accessible space is finally repainted while an adjacent space is removed by filling it with blue stripes.

5 or 6 accessible spaces were added to the Amtrak lot
in place of non-accessible spaces.  Other, adjacent spaces were 
striped blue, never to return or be occupied again.

Because the situation with the recording and archiving of city meetings has deteriorated lately, I have not been able to pay as much attention to what is being said and done at City Hall as I have in the past.  Plus, the meetings are a depressing bore run by a guy who is an egotistical bully who can't stop interrupting council members, particularly women.  While it's possible that Messrs. Perry and Foster made the council aware of their plans for the new handicapped parking spaces in the CHMPL, including why each space needs a blank space next to it, I haven't heard or read evidence of it.  

I am almost certain that the Parking Study Ad Hoc Reductio Ad Absurdum Ad Nauseum Committee was not made aware of Rob's and Jason's intentions, but who knows?  If the council was informed, was anyone told (or did anyone think to ask) how much in revenue the city stands to lose with the 5 fewer meters in the lot?  My guess is that no one on the council or in City Hall cares what that amount is and wouldn't know what to do with that information besides ignore it and move on.  "It's been done, what can we do about it now?"

What I fear most at a future council meeting is if City Treasurer Heather Campbell mentions that, as she has in the past on a few occasions, parking revenues are down and "I will have to talk with the Police Chief to see what is going on."  I might have a conniption fit if I hear that again.  

Well, this is our Hudson, dying one drip and one quarter at a time. Pardon me, that's 5 quarters, or one dollar and twenty-five cents at a time. They call that CHUMP CHANGE, just the kind of change Hudson doesn't need.

I went online and looked up the requirements for handicapped ("accessible") spaces in parking lots in New York State.  It turns out that for a lot the size of the CHMPL, we are required to have 5 accessible spaces -- which we now have.  I could find no information that all of them are required to be van accessible, which are those with the adjacent empty space.  I can't imagine that the city was required to create all new van accessible spaces, which seems nonsensical.  That is also how I feel about the accessible space in front of City Hall on Warren Street which took away half the width of our sidewalk. Can you put a price tag on that missing sidewalk? Apparently, the ADA people in Albany or D.C. are telling us that this is the way it has to be, or else.

There is one last thing worth noting about the new paint in the CHMPL, something positive but far overdue.  There are finally arrows on the pavement in the lot to keep traffic flowing safely in one direction.  It was common to see drivers headed the wrong way in the lot, especially on Saturdays, since the one ONE WAY sign inside the lot and the one outside the lot were rarely being paid attention to or noticed.  Now there is no reasonable excuse for anyone to be driving the wrong way in that lot.  The arrows should not have taken this long to arrive.  Of course, DPW didn't install the arrows; we paid someone to do it for them.  Some things are just too difficult or impossible for DPW to take care of.  They sure know how to hand out the money, though, don't they?!

Here is the dumbest accessible parking space I have ever seen, located just shy of the rear of the Amtrak lot.  It is at least a one and a half-minute WALK to the entrance and another 30 or 45 second WALK to the station.  Some (wet) access!  One wonders how or if this one will be "improved" (widened) like the others

I was incorrect in claiming that the CHMPL had 100 meters prior to today.  It has had 98 meters since about two months ago when two longtime broken meters were finally removed, though not replaced.  That means we have 93 meters now. The parking people left us this as a reminder of how on top of things they are: