Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor:

Motorists beware! Most people I have talked to describe the new driving and parking plan around our Parish Courthouse as a fiasco.
You have to experience it to believe it! When we drive around our Courthouse Square on one-way streets with the new parking situation on the north and south side of the building, to park a vehicle there on those two one-way streets, a driver attempting to park will require the driver to stop in the middle of the one- lane traffic flow, and then back up against the traffic flow into a designated angular parking slot. What will inevitably result is that moving vehicles behind the wanna- be parker will have to stop (and perhaps back up some) to wait for the parker to back up against the traffic flow, and perhaps wait even longer while the parker makes a second attempt to park in reverse within parallel white lines. And, of course, these facts will worsen when the parker does not use his turn-signal to warn trailing traffic to stop to give him safe passage to back up in the middle of the street.
This one rectangular block in our little city is the most traffic-gluttonous driving area here, and this new plan causes it to be worse. Traffic feeds around this block from five busy streets and necessitates one to drive around this block to reach are otherwise unreachable destination due to one way streets. Locals are too familiar with this situation.
I note with interest that a retired educator in our parish authored a hyper-critical letter to this newspaper last week on this traffic issue noting that it was many years ago that he had ever seen back-up angular parking on a city street – and it was in Oregon.
Regardless who funded these street usage changes, I believe that anoverwhelming majority of drivers opine that the current plan is poorly thought out. I fail to understand that pedestrians intending to cross the street at these six intersections will significantly benefit from these new parking rules. And what about the resulting lane usage restrictions to turn from Peace Street, Charity Street and Tivoli Street?
Before these changes, we could drive around the courthouse in the left lane(there were two lanes) while not impeding other motorists. Now, there is only one driving lane and motorists must wait for drivers ahead who stop and then back up to park angularly. It is an unwarranted and wasted street usage.
I am told that there was a public meeting a couple of months ago where posters were displayed showing the proposals, but there was no traffic engineer to speak to defend the proposals. There are some trial attorneys who probably would be eager to cross-examine the “expert” who authored this new traffic plan.
Let’s face it. We are stuck with our Parish Courthouse situated on an island. This new plan makes this bottleneck situation more cumbersome – and needlessly so. Increasing the number of vehicles that can park on two sides of the courthouse in this new plan has a down side more significant than any upside.

Louis G. Garrot, III
Abbeville, Louisiana