downtown’s parking and pedestrian challenges

[Or: Two more reasons why people don’t go downtown.]

Good luck parallel parking in front of the Palace.

This is what’s available of the designated handicapped parking spots.

The head-in parking spots are only half plowed, leaving vehicles half parked in the traffic lane.
This is down by Driscol Music, but it also occurs in other places along Broadway.

After all the time and money and manpower invested in the installation of the new ADA compliant street corners and crosswalks,
good luck getting to one. Like Broadway isn’t difficult enough to cross. This is at 5th Street.

Just a few steps south of that crosswalk is the cut through the curb snow pile.

This is the only cut through that lined up with a crosswalk on Broadway between 4th and 7th.
This is in front of the Palace – good luck getting to the opposite [SW] corner [6th & Broadway].

Looking south down the east side of Broadway from the vicinity of 6th Street.

I realize that the city plows have to be careful to not throw the road crap through the front windows of the downtown buildings. However, I do not think it is too much to ask for the city to send a crew downtown with a Bobcat and/or front end loader and a small dump truck to clear the parking spaces and sidewalks properly. The snow could be dumped down at Hot Waters in the gravel parking lot that someone keeps snow plowing.

I found two spots on the east side of Broadway that were cleared considerably better than the rest and those were in front of Nielsen’s Jewelers and Faroh’s Candies. I don’t know if those business owners took it upon themselves to make sure that their customers could reach them safely. If so, it was a wise investment. Those two locations definitely stood out amongst the unwelcoming and unusable snow and ice covered parking spots and sidewalks on their side of Broadway.
-lisa