It seems that our commuter parking problem has become a political issue between Schwager and Pignatelli. It shouldn’t be. It should be a borough problem solved by our entire borough council but until they can come up with a solution I will offer mine. Offer commuter parking, at a nominal fee, at our new Great Oak Park. No ball games or student school pick-ups to worry about there. And since the entrance and exit will be off of Route 202 no local streets will be impacted. The monies raised from the parking fees can be used to further develop the park. Problem solved.
Howard Rubenstein
Howard, GREAT idea! In fact I had a meeting with the mayor last week to discuss this very topic. The issue we presently have is that current parking lot could only safely accommodate 20-25 commuters, so it would be more of a spill over lot. The other big issue with the lot is that its surface is rock and dirt. Snow removal would be near impossible without destroying the surface; because of that we wouldn’t have commuter parking at that lot for about 4 months out of the year.
As I suggested to the mayor, a better solution would be to use the old Mueller’s lots once we fix them up. Those lots held between 150 -200 cars. Presently they are macadam and hopefully the DEP will allow us to keep them as a hard surface so snow removal would be a non-issue. Commuters would not be using the lot in the evenings or weekends, when the park would get the most traffic, and as you said we could place all commuter fees into a trust fund used only to maintain the park. It would be a win – win.
Yes, agreed. Think that’s a great solution for right now, but Mike is right – a paved lot or at least a much smoother lot would be needed to make this effective. And the money to go towards the park would be quite a plus.