We in Shorewood fancy ourselves a progressive village in terms of our concern for the environment. However, our parking policies discourage those who rent spaces in our public lots from riding their bicycles or carpooling to work.
A coworker of mine at Mark Travel rents in Shorewood and has a space in one of our parking lots. She recently purchased a bicycle, which she intended to ride to work. Unfortunately, during the day, she is not allowed to keep her car in the public lot she rents space in, or on any street near her home. The streets in the vicinity of her building all have 2 hour parking limits, and her overnight lot does not allow her to park in it during the day.
When she called Village Hall, she was told she could either move her car to another part of the Village to an unrestricted street every morning and back off the street in the evening, or move her car to the 3500 Oakland lot, where she would be required purchase yet another permit.
Instead of going through this hassle, she has decided to continue to drive to work. She lives 8.3 miles from the office, so doing some quick math, we get the following numbers. Driving 16.6 miles per day instead of biking for 36 weeks a year (she wouldn’t ride a bike in the WI winter!) in a car that gets 25 miles per gallon means that she will burn 120 gallons of gasoline this year.
This fuel will be unnecessarily wasted unless Shorewood can find a way for this willing biker to leave her car near her home during the day. How many more renters would take advantage of a program which allowed them to bike or carpool to work, if there were some easy solution for where to leave their car?
This is problem we can solve. While I recognize that the parking shortage prevents Shorewood from allowing unrestricted parking in certain lots, there must be a better way than the bizarre and burdensome solution outlined above. This matters for two reasons. First off, in this day and age of climate change and soaring gas prices, we should work to remove obstacles for people who want to carpool or ride their bikes. Secondly, this is one more example of the cost and inconvenience we are forcing renters to assume, which homeowners do not have to deal with.
