Perhaps the spaces have just always been a pain

We ran into someone out in the street measuring Downtown parking

spaces. He said it wasn’t because he had heard anything or read

anything, but because he just knew something was different. What he

found in his nonscientific study was that the spaces he felt had

shrunk were in fact of various sizes, seemingly at random.

But apparently, it’s not against code to have spaces of various

sizes. City Manager Ken Frank points out that sometimes a driveway

dictates that either three tiny spaces can be drawn, or two larger

spaces. So sometimes they have to go for two spaces that are a bit

larger than the rest.

Those straight-in spaces, of course, are not getting all the

complaints. There’s plenty of yelling about the parallel parking

spaces, too. People are saying they’re smaller and they don’t line up

with the meters any more in some spots, making it more difficult to

line up the car within the allotted space -- as if parking Downtown

wasn’t difficult enough. But these complaints too, are said to be

unfounded.

The city manager has assured us there are exactly the same number

of spaces, and therefore they are the same size as before. It’s a

point, he says, made evident by the one meter per space.

And that leads to another point: The spaces will not be redone.

It’s not going to happen. So, people of Laguna and visitors too, get

used to squeezing in and out of the car, plan extra time for scooting

back and forth to make sure you’re within the lines and consider

investing in one of those personal dent removers. Of course, we could

all just buy smaller cars, maybe one of those Mini Coopers ...

On the plus side, now we have one more reason to push for

peripheral parking and to keep those trams running. Perhaps this is

all a ploy to turn Laguna into the poster city for public

transportation in Orange County, but that would require the

assumption that there was some reason or rhyme to those spaces.