Parking In And Around Our Community

February 1, 2002 by Administrator
Filed under: #11: February 2002 

Have you ever wondered who in their right mind would have approved the plans for Riverbend in terms of parking? I sure have! To me, it’s obvious that the individuals (I’m assuming more than one person was involved) making the decision had no intention of living here.

Admittedly, we technically have enough spaces in the parking courts for every home to park one car in the parking court. However, in some cases, that parking place is not in the court associated with the home. Nowadays, homes commonly have more than one car requiring a parking place (and that doesn’t include our garages). This only compounds the problem.

The convoluted parking scheme has created more parking headaches than can be counted; and if that isn’t enough, the Township just reduced parking on Riverbend Drive by painting yellow “no parking” lines at the entrances of the community and each of the parking courts, and designating Riverbend Drive as a no parking road when it snows (although they have yet to install the signs indicating so).

Why the yellow lines?
Apparently the police and Fire Marshal patrolled Riverbend over a period of time and repeatedly identified parking concerns. These included (but may not be limited to):

  • Parking in the court entrance ways
  • Parking too far from the curb by the islands so that emergency vehicles (and on at least one occasion, the garbage collection truck) could not pass
  • Parking too close to the Riverbend Drive intersections

Initially, the Fire Marshal presented plans to the Riverbend Board of Trustees which included very intrusive parking restrictions. Apparently conversations between the parties were successful to some degree (from our perspective) and our parking courts and the island areas on Riverbend Drive were not marked as originally planned.

What now?
We make the best of it!

Each court in Riverbend has made a determination to have a specific parking space “assigned” to each home or to park in the available spaces on a first-in gets the spot basis (limiting each home to one vehicle parking space in the court). In some courts the chosen plan works very well, in others, there is room for improvement. If you are unfamiliar with your court’s plan, please ask a neighbor. If your court’s parking situation has room for improvement, invite your neighbors over and come up with a new plan that will accommodate everyone as well as possible.

Keep in mind that parking on Riverbend Drive is more limited than in the past, and park as conscientiously as possible (for ex- ample, pull as close as possible to the yellow lines so that more cars can fit along the curb). Vehicles have been ticketed for parking over the yellow lines.

Clean out the garage so that a car will fit – that’s one less car needing to park on the road.

Feel free to share your parking ideas with a Board Member or EPM so that we can include them in future newsletters to the community.

February 2002 Newsletter Contents

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