13 Comments
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Phthor Quiddity's avatar

Wouldn't it be easier to prevent car storage by simply banning overnight parking?

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A Person's avatar

Any word on whether business has been slowed with the introduction of metered parking at Wabash Landing? Might be hard to tell in summer, but I wonder how many people pull up, see the signs, and just don’t have time to download an app and set up an account.

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Ken Thompson's avatar

I won't shop there while the metered parking is in effect. You have to wonder if the City Council is just begging to be replaced in the next election.

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A Person's avatar

I'm not going to boycott, it's no problem to me, I just do not get why WL would look at a strip mall that has struggled to hold tenants for 20+ years and say "Hey, let's make it harder to shop there!"

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Jenn B's avatar

Especially for the businesses whose visit time is just a few minutes. I guess a lot of those customers will just not pay.

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Mike Dwyer's avatar

The upside is that there will more open spaces so now the DoorDash drivers won’t sit in the middle of the road blocking traffic!

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Jenn B's avatar

Interesting point. I'm never down there long enough to see the ongoing issues like that, but it makes sense.

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Mike Dwyer's avatar

The last time I went down there before the park mobile system was in place, I was dropping my wife off. So I stopped to let her out, no one was behind me.

But then I continued to drive through. There was a car stopped in front of Panera in the middle of the road with no one in it. I sat there for 3 or 4 mins with people stacking up behind me waiting for the DoorDash driver to come out. When he got yelled out by a few people in the line, to which he yelled back “sorry, there was no parking spots!”

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Phthor Quiddity's avatar

I would not chance it. College town parking enforcement has a reputation for a good reason. Or maybe they just hate me.

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Jenn B's avatar

I worked at a university for about 20 years in another state. Parking was enforced strictly. There was a standing joke (this was a private university with high tuition and wealthy students) that the kids just figured that the $50 parking ticket was worth paying.

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A Person's avatar

I forget, is it free first 30 minutes? If that's the case then they'll be fine, but I assume that still requires that you register your arrival time on the app, and for the first several months a large number of people won't have the app and won't want to spend 10 minutes downloading it and setting up a new account.

I bet you're right, though, that a large number of people doing a quick pickup will look around, see no parking enforcement, and just duck in without bothering with the app. Hell, I have the app and likely won't bother if I'm ducking into Panera for two minutes to grab something off the counter.

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Noemi's avatar

"Instead of spaces offered with hourly time limits, metered parking covered by a ParkMobile app will be used to manage spots in those areas." I don't do apps. I guess this will encourage me to eat in downtown Lafayette rather than on the Levee.

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