From outside the box

Their going to do what downtown? Change it from three to two lanes? That is nucking futs! What are they thinking? We trust the people we elect to use common sense, and I think they do most of the time. But every now and then.....

I remember when Marie Calanders was going in and the city put them thru hell over the palm trees they wanted to put in out front. They said it didn't jive with the architectural continuity of the area, or something like that.

About twenty years ago, before drive-thru coffee shops, McDonalds opened the first drive-thru over on Palmetto and the city had a fit about that. It took a few years before coffee drive-thru's could come to Chico because the reasoning was that drive-thru's encouraged more car use. We used to joke about somebody sitting at home getting ready to get on their bike and go to McDonalds, and then, remembering they had a drive-thru window, thought, "No, wait, we can take the car!"

There was another crazy plan the city councel was throwing around back in the early eighties to make the streets downtown go zig zag, the idea being that it would discourage traffic. Crazy! And now they are talking about taking away a lane, restricting the flow of traffic, in order to what....I'm not sure.

If parking is the problem, I have a solution that will free up downtown parking while adding more money to the city coffers. The more ideal a parking space is, the more money it cost to park there. The best spaces, the ones on Broadway and Main between first and third streets as well as on second and third between those streets, should cost $3 an hour to park there. Each block further out, the price goes down. Salem and Flume would be $2 an hour, fifth street $1 an hour, etc. Also, charge into the evening hours and on Saturdays. The meters would have to be changed or modified to accept bills, or better yet, pre paid cards which could be purchased from the retailer's downtown. This would also encourage more walking, more bicycles, and less pollution. And I'd be willing to bet that the good parking spots would still be hard to get!