Monday, November 23, 2009

Pay to Park Comes to 18th Street

We know many people are infuriated with the parking situation in the Sloop (and the city) and this weekend we received an email from a reader who said pay to park kiosks have recently been installed on 18th street:
There are new “pay to park” kiosks along 18th Street. I noticed that formerly free street parking had been converted to metered parking during the week ending 11/13/09. The formerly free spaces are on the south side of 18th between Wabash and Michigan and the north and south sides of 18th between Wabash and State. There could have been others, but these are the stretches that I noticed.

As a traveling consultant, I often get stuck with rental cars over the weekend. I was infuriated last Friday when I tried to park in the formerly free spaces that I used to count on. Of course, the still-free parking on the south side of 18th between State and Clark, was packed with cars that could not park in newly metered spaces. I had to park west of Clark. Granted, this probably isn’t the worst parking situation in the city, but knowing that Chicago is not even benefiting from these really makes me angry. I did a quick search of the Internet, but I couldn’t find a map delineating free and metered stretches in the South Loop. Do you know if one exists?

We didn't have much luck finding a map either, does anyone know if one exists?

(Hat Tip to Jay for the email and pic!)