Angled Parking Experiment

Lancaster experimented with angled parking for an afternoon on June 1. At three locations around town, the City re-lined the streets with tape to see how it would work out. The reason is traffic calming; the City is looking for ways to reduce speeding.

The photos to the right are of North Plum Street. The street was re-marked to have parallel parking along the East side, two lanes of travel (one in each direction), and angled parking on the west side. Cars are meant to back into the spots and pull out head-first.

Results, in my opinion, were mixed. Traffic definitely slowed on N. Plum St., but that could be attributed to confusion and the cones. Buses had difficulty, but those problems can be worked out. The worst part was sight distance when exiting an alley in the middle of the block. And I think people were flumoxed by driving with the grain of the herringbone pattern; this is opposite to the way angled parking in works in parking lots.

There were good points, though. Because of the staggering of the cars, not only do car doors not open into the travel lane, they don't even hit other cars. And kids getting out of cars will automatically be funneled back to the sidewalk. That last point was told to me by Mayor Rick Gray who was personally checking the results on his yellow Harley. That's him, in the shadows, on the right.