I thought we put this one to rest

I have been following the folly of the city of Escondido. They want to introduce on street parking restrictions in their neighborhoods. Seems a lot of people in the Southern California community near San Diego have more than a couple of cars and park them on the streets causing mayhem for their neighbors. The city wants to limit the number of cars you can park on the street overnight to two. Read about it here.

The Chamber of commerce and property owners groups are up in arms and say that the problem really isn’t that bad and after all, folks might have to clean out their garages or horrors, sell some of their vehicles.

My comment now, is the same as it was a year ago when this first came up. Charge for on street parking in the neighborhoods. Give folks a single on street permit and then tell them they have to pay for any over one.

This is the solution. The money generated would more than pay for the program. People would be motivated to clean out their garages and sell their junker cars, and those that didn’t want to would simply have to pony up a few bucks each month for the right to use the city streets to store their belongings.  All these homes have garages and garages are for cars. They are putting the cars in the streets and storing "stuff" in the garages. In effect, the streets are being used to store their "stuff." 

The idea of charging for on street parking in residential neighborhoods has never been discussed, I believe, in Escondido.  I don’t know the numbers, but the map in the reference in the article looks like a pretty large area to me. If 500 homes put up 25 bucks a month that’s 150k a year. Certainly enough to run the program (taking into account fines and etc). My guess is that there would be money left over to fund clean up in parks, tree planting, new lighting, and the like. Sold that way, my guess is that the folks in those neighborhoods wouldn’t see it as such a problem.

Will it come to pass? — not in our lifetime, at least in Escondido.

JVH