All the recent talk and delay updates from the Hudson Police Department (!) regarding the city's wonderful new parking payment program is focused on on-street parking payment issues, absolutely none of it having to do with parking lots. Since I haven't heard a peep about the city's five downtown parking lots in months, I guess everything is taken care of with them and there's no need to worry about them anymore. Surely, by now all the necessary scannable signs (the same signs as seen along Warren Street) are up so that people parking in the lots can easily and quickly pay for a parking space with their phone or be directed to the kiosks, right? Surely, HPD doesn't have any more work to do in any parking lots, do they? Heck, the kiosks for the lots were installed 7 months ago! Surely, the HPD parking gurus have done all they can do in our parking lots so they can concentrate on on-street parking matters and signs exclusively, right? Surely, they've crossed parking lots off of their TO DO list, right?
WRONG!
Yesterday I had a look around the city's Union Street parking lot, and what I saw did not impress me. At all. (HPD headquarters is located, of course, merely a half block up the street.) There were 4 tiny plastic-laminated paper signs taped to poles to help visitors out. If I had to guess, I'd say those "signs" have been there for at least 3 months. Not one sign was made of metal. There was so much snow on the ground in a parking space in front of one "sign" that it was not possible to get closer than 10 feet from it without stepping on the white stuff that might be as slippery as ice. Of course, if a car were parked in the space, well, try to scan another paper sign elsewhere with your phone, pal! Or use the kiosk even though you probably would rather not!
Last week, Mishanda Franklin, David Miller and Doreen Danforth had two DPW employees make a mad rush to put up as many metal signs on both sides of the nine blocks of Warren as possible (though not on side streets -- still working on those) but decided that the Union Street lot could wait until next year to have proper, respectable and permanent scannable signage. What's the rush?
This whole new paid parking program is clearly IN THE WRONG HANDS!
Well, Mr. HUDseen, what about the city's parking lot on Warren Street closest to 3rd? Surely our police force has taken care of that busy lot and needn't give it any more attention, right? Wasn't the kiosk for that lot installed months ago as well? No and yes!
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| One of just two scannable signs for the entire lot |
This lot, slightly smaller than the Union lot, has just two metal signs for visitors... if they can find them. (Hey, no paper signs! Progress!) The two signs are on each side of the middle of the lot, both on top of meterless meter poles 3 feet off the ground, a foot or three lower than the tops of most vehicles parking in the tight lot. These are the signs that Mishanda Franklin hopes everyone parking in the lot can and will scan with their phone or read about the city's f'n parking app so that her parking enforcers DON'T have to issue $10 meter violation tickets to their cars. (HPD would prefer to have people easily pay for their parking spaces rather than her enforcers issuing tickets, wouldn't she?) These two scannable signs were apparently our police chief's idea of an improved parking experience for anyone parking in the lot. Do we really want people standing in empty parking spaces in a tight and often busy parking lot scanning a fucking sign with their phone with their back to cars that may be entering the only available parking space in the lot? And when the spaces surrounding the two signs are occupied by parked vehicles, how easy is it to actually find the signs, let alone approach them? Hey, watch out for that door swinging open! Hey, watch out for that quiet electric 4-ton SUV backing up in a hurry to get out of the narrow lot! Hey, be careful on that ice between the spaces directly in front of the signs! Do we really want people walking between other parked cars to read a sign that is supposed to help them pay for their parking space that might be 40 feet away? Is this really an improvement over a parking meter that was directly in front of every parked car in the lot that took seconds to transact with and had no one wandering around the lot looking for some help and not looking in front of them but peering over the tops of parked cars in search of a sign of some sort for some fucking assistance? Two signs three feet off of the ground between parking spaces meant to be used by anyone and everyone parking in the lot? Hey, buddy, at least those signs aren't made of paper, laminated with plastic and covered in orange tape. Be thankful, jerk! It could be worse!
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| Moments before I took this picture, an SUV pulled out of the space. The lot had been full. |
During a Parking Study Committee meeting early last year, head parking studier Jen Belton had this to say about the other lot on Warren, the one next to MOTO coffee and motorcycle oil: "No one wants to park there. It's a disaster." It was likely Belton's most insightful observation of the parking situation here in Hudson, and I'm not kidding! There was discussion (that included co-studier and co-parking expert guru Tom the Bully Depietro) of getting an estimate from Rob Perry as to how much it would cost to completely repave the lot's surface to make it respectable again. If Rob Perry ever heard from anyone on the committee about transforming that lot from an ugly, dangerous "disaster" into something respectable and safe, it went in one of his ears and right out the other fucking one.
The lot closest to 3rd Street may not be a "disaster," but it certainly is a mess that should also have been completely redone years ago. Mishanda Franklin and Doreen Danforth care about the walking and driving conditions (or attractiveness) of the city's parking lots as little as Rob Perry does. Have you had a look, drive or walk around the lot behind City Hall lately? Talk about a f'n ugly mess!
And what of the signage in that lot, the largest the city owns and maintains -- DIRECTLY BEHIND CITY HALL? Well, surprise, surprise, it actually has brand new scannable metal signs just 9 or 10 feet high on poles, along with a few others on the top of old meter poles waiting to be tagged with paint, stickered and bent or just ripped off completely. (Check back in August!) But what none of those 8 or 10 signs offer is a helpful hint as to where the lot's sole kiosk is located, it being far from many spaces. The lot once had a paper plastic-laminated sign posted on an ancient wooden light pole that did offer helpful information regarding the kiosk's whereabouts, even if it was a bit, well, unprofessional-looking. That sign was replaced with a metal sign, about 12 feet higher on the pole. (Well, that's what it seems like, at least!)
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| Lord help us! |
Let's say that a visitor parks their car in the lot in a space closest to Prison Alley. If they want to use the lot's only kiosk (and the city does want visitors to use it or they never would have installed one), first of all they have to figure out where the heck it is. Surely, it has got to be near the lot's exit that nearly everyone uses to walk out of the lot to Warren Street, right? No, sorry, dummy, it's not there! Keep searching! If by some miracle the visitor figures out where the kiosk is, they will have to walk across the entire lot to reach the vehicle entrance on Columbia Street they just used where the lot's only payment kiosk is waiting for them. Should there be too much snow and ice on the island in the middle of the lot that DPW never bothers to clear, add another two minutes to the walk. If a successful transaction is made at the kiosk (if the kiosk is operating properly), which might take two or three minutes, the poor person or people will be forced to walk back directly across OR AROUND the perimeter of one half of the entire fucking lot, hoping not to get run over by a moving vehicle, hoping there isn't two feet of snow and ice still on the island in the middle of the lot from a snowfall one month ago, and hoping they never have to park in that foresaken parking lot ever again. EVER!
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| Not Rob Perry's problem... |
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| ... nor Mishanda Franklin's, Jen Belton's, Tom DePietro's, David Miller's or Doreen Danforth's! |
None of the 50 meterless parking meter poles in the lot have been removed. We might get enough snow tomorrow to cover the tops of those poles, especially if there are snowdrifts and DPW piles it high enough!!!!!
This, my friends, is pure fucking insanity (as HUDseen has been yelling for over one year)! And it is brought to us by THE WRONG PEOPLE WHO SHOULD INSTEAD BE SOLELY CONCERNED WITH AND FOCUSED ON LAW ENFORCEMENT ISSUES MEANT TO KEEP HUDSON RESIDENTS SAFE AND CONTENT, NOT CONCERNED WITH PARKING KIOSKS, SOLAR PANELS, SIGNS AND ORANGE TAPE.
This week's Register Star article regarding the city's (HPD's!) delayed efforts to finalize the new parking payment program featured quotes from just two city officials. The mayor had a lot to say (poor Joe, what a welcome to 520 Warren he is having!), a bit more than HPD Captain David Miller did. Miller did have something reassuring to tell the public. It was something along the lines that HPD's Parking Bureau only received one complaint over the phone that day regarding the new parking payment system. In other words, everything is just fine with the new paid parking system and it's all going as planned!
For years, there has been a metal dog poop warning sign in the asphalt and concrete lot behind City Hall. It is about the same size and at the same height as the scannable metal parking payment signs HPD recently had installed in the lot, though it is certainly easier to read. I've seen a lot of ugly things in that lot (including all of the wooden light poles), but never dog poop. I guess that sign is serving the residents and visitors of Hudson well -- all the dog owners walking their dogs in the lot are paying attention to it! Yes, someone definitely knew what they were doing when they had that sign installed!
With the snow and general frigid weather emergency for the next week or more, DPW will not be posting any scannable signs on Warren's side streets for at least another week. What does this mean? More delays, more weeks of free parking, more lost parking revenue, and more insanity and dysfunction for all to see and wonder when and if it might end. What a great time of the year HPD chose to completely transform the city's parking payment system! Or was this Jen Belton's and Tom Depietro's idea? Mayor Ferris was quoted in the Register Star article as saying the remaining ten parking kiosks (that have been in storage at the DPW garage on Dock Street for 50 or 51 weeks) would be installed for on-street parking, though he couldn't say where or when they would be put in the ground. He also said that four of those ten kiosks would first have to be retrofitted with solar panels because they arrived without them. He wasn't asked how much, if anything, that unforeseen task would cost city taxpayers to get done.
By the way, how much are all these new scannable metal parking payment signs costing us? Whose budget is paying for them? How much did the scannable disposable paper "signs" covered in laminated plastic cost taxpayers? And for how many more months will the four paper "signs' still posted in the Union Street parking lot remain? Or are they the best HPD can offer us for the foreseeable future?
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