Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: PARKING SPACES

[Jim Snyder-Grant (jimsg]

In response to questions about parking.. 

New View (Acton MA) is placed in a  car-oriented suburb. We were 
required to provide 2 car slots per household for our 24 households, 
between garages, drive up parking, and parking lot parking. That left a 
handful of spots in parking lots for visitors and a handicapped 
accessibility space. 

In theory this was going to be very tight. In practice it has generally 
been plenty. Two caveats/details:

1) We never painted in the parking space lines and numbers shown on our 
plan. Generally, it looks like people are parking tighter than they 
would if there were lines, so we end up with more space. I don't know if 
this will hold up over time, but it is one  side effect of 
procrastination. As far as I now there is no active plan for getting the 
lotlines in. Every so often, neighbors actively communicate with each 
other if their parking expectations are not being met (e.g." we were 
assignd a spot close to the edge of the parking lot so our long walk 
would be more reasonable, but someone else keeps grabbing our spot") I 
think this communication has been effective, but I am not sure. I am 
sure our conversations about parking are not over..

2) The kids in the community are heavily clumped in age. When they hit 
the range between driving license age & high school graduation in large 
numbers there may well be a big squeeze on parking spaces.

-Jim
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jimsg [at] hotmail.com
Jim Snyder-Grant
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