Wednesday at the Traffic Forum

Wednesday afternoon at the Traffic Forum at the Municipal Building I read a letter and told about a park experience twenty years ago.  As City Planning discusses North Downtown Subarea, the letter to the editor the paper accepted might once again pertain.  My topic was cars, and my letter appeared in The Morning News Tribune, June 4, 1993 page A-13:

 

“Cars don't belong at Wright Park”, they titled it. 

As I walked to church during Car-Less Commute Week I was provoked to see a signboard on a nearby church, "Parking available at Wright Park Community Center."  There is no space at that park for a parking lot.  People who walk there are aware that it is landscaped to create a sense of space. Those who park there misunderstand what they see. 

The precedent set by cars in the arboretum endangers an asset as lovely as Wright Park, and it is especially wrong to endanger the park when we should instead enlarge, protect and improve it. 

Cars at the lovely park are wrong; there is no space at Wright Park for cars.  LAURA JENSEN Tacoma

 The discussion continued.  A year later, in the July 31, 1994 issue of the Morning News Tribune, the columnist C.R. Roberts was headlined:  "Despite compelling argument, park should not be a parking lot."   Participants at the park community center had received a notice from the park police supervisor and the director of maintenance and operations, that according to Roberts, warned offenders that they risked receiving citations if they continued driving or parking where they should not.   "We were getting up to 35 cars, on the grass, on tree roots."  the officials said.  According to Roberts, “We live in the age of the car, and now we're running out of space...Thirty new parking spaces would not destroy the park, but they would turn part of the park into a parking lot.  And that's the problem...Wright Park must not fall victim to the automobile." 

The News Tribune published another letter by me – within this letter I wrote, "C.R. Roberts July 31 column about the seniors' cars at Wright Park, which disapproves of their illegal parking, is correct." 

“Parks Will Need More Space, Not Less” - was the way the letter was headlined. 

Apart from my letter most of the discussion Wednesday was about crosswalk danger.  Urban forest does compete with cars for space.  Wrights Park is in the North Downtown Subarea.  The park’s blocked pond and aging trees were motivators when the park was restored about six years ago.  Also within the restoration plan was an effort that the park not “fall victim to the automobile.”