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https://n2v.almanacnews.com/square/print/2015/02/22/aggressive-parking-enforcement

Town Square

Aggressive Parking Enforcement

Original post made by Ex-Downtown Shopper, Menlo Park: Downtown, on Feb 22, 2015

Have you received a Menlo Park - downtown overtime parking citation this year? It seems like the city has doubled its efforts to cite as many people as possible. There are days where it seems like only minutes go by after a one or two hour time limit has passed that presto, there's a $45.00 ticket on your windshield. No doubt this is a money making enterprise for the city, but I suspect it is costing the downtown merchants even more. Afterall, parking is free at Town and Country Village as it is at Stanford Shopping Center. No hassle, no fuse - no confusing signs.

What can be done to ease the crowded parking lots is yet to be determined. Parking garages may help, but with the influx of new employees coming to a multitude of developments along El Camino Real, and elsewhere, the problem will no doubt get worse before it gets better.

Some have proposed a three hour time limit. That proposal has worked in other cities, particularly for those going to a restaurant for lunch followed by some shopping.

Comments

Posted by resident
a resident of Menlo Park: Central Menlo Park
on Feb 23, 2015 at 1:04 pm

The city is not trying to make money. The city only cracks down because local merchants complain that parking space hogs are discouraging new customers from coming downtown.

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Posted by Downtown Shopper
a resident of Menlo Park: Downtown
on Feb 25, 2015 at 1:39 pm

The resident above states "The city is not trying to make money." Are you sure of that? If that was so, why doesn't the city place a "warning" sign on your windshield (at least one time) or try to reduce the number of overtime parking tickets by posting more signs in the very lengthy parking plazas?

At the moment, some shoppers do not see the signs at the driveway entrances. One suggestion may be if additional two hour parking limit signs(such as in the center of the parking lots) were posted in the parking lots, as a reminder, it may help to reduce the number of people ticketed.

The city has also put "two sided" signs on Santa Cruz Avenue for one hour parking, why not make the large wooden signs located at the parking plaza entrances two sided as well, so that when you get out of your car and walk toward the sidewalk, you are reminded that the lot is limited to a period of only two hours. This only seems courteous.

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