Springfield close to remembering why they switched some streets to one way.

After learning that Springfield was going to switch some streets back to two way streets after they were switched to one way streets, for some reason, I was going to try and figure out how they forgot why they switched the streets in the first place, but it looks like Dave Bakke at the State Journal Register beat me to it, way back in 2013 with the article: One-way streets were the answer to everything.

Thank's Dave for reminding everyone back then. It seems the post World War II boom of the fifties caused so much economic growing pains on the infrastructure, streets needed to be rearranged.

But apparently everyone has forgotten the reminder when another article by Crystal Thomas: Downtown Springfield closer to adding some two-way streets popped up recently.

The configuration might be slightly different. Some of the the rationale for the change seems to be related to safety, but another is that traffic has dropped so much it seems reasonable to reconfigure the flow of traffic. Wait, what?

What does that say about all that planning and studying for economic growth they've been talking about these past several years? Did they incorporate this traffic study with potential economic development?

How many times are they going to change the traffic, and at what cost?

Parking Solution for Springfield

There's something interesting about these pictures besides the fact that they were taken at the state capitol in Olympia, Washington. What's missing? Parking meters, of course. How do they pay for parking?

Instead of using parking meters, visitors and employees purchase parking at a few kiosks, where you receive a printout that shows you the precise time your parking expires. You keep the printout visible on your car's dashboard.

You can purchase up to ten hours at a time, I think, maybe more. If you are just visiting to run multiple errands, you don't need to keep feeding any parking meters and you don't have to worry about leaving excess time on a meter after you leave for your next destination.

You may be able to purchase and print a parking schedule online in advance. It would have a bar code for authentication and monitoring by parking enforcement.

Some areas around businesses only allow for 30 minute to 2 hour parking maximum. For this, your tire would be marked with yellow chalk, and even if you paid for several hours of parking, you would still need to move your vehicle to another spot, for the sake of the businesses.

There is potential to have certain tiers of temporary parking permits, with packages for daily, weekly, monthly, or annual parking for residents who live downtown. These could be special window stickers. Ultimately this eliminates the ugly old style parking meters.