This is what the north side of Main Avenue looks like currently with diagonal parking. This scene is near New Jersey Avenue, and the new plan will extend this to Lawrence Avenue. Jean Bredin photo, Blogfinger staff.© 2/16/17.
This is the north side of Main Ave. along the edge of Firemen’s Park. Imagine it clogged with diagonally parked cars. © Jean Bredin photo; Blogfinger staff. 2/16/17.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.net
In a Coaster article (Jan. 25, 2017) it was reported that the Township Committee approved “almost 100 new parking spaces”and that the Committee was “acting on recommendations presented by the ad hoc OG Parking Task Force.” That task force has members on it from the OGHOA.
The plan includes creating diagonal head-on parking on the north side of Main Ave. from New Jersey Ave. to Lawrence Ave. The same is planned on the west side of Central Avenue from Heck to Webb avenues.
But diagonal parking is ugly. The “new spaces” are created by cramming more cars into a given space where currently there is parallel parking. Diagonal parking may be OK for commercial areas, but in residential areas it is not suitable.
On Main Avenue, starting from the eastern edge of Firemen’s Park and heading west, the diagonal parking will look congested and will visually and actually narrow Main Avenue. Currently that portion of the Avenue has an impressive and welcoming boulevard look.
For visitors who come into our historic town, they will not enjoy the same openness that currently shows off the Grove at its best with historic homes and a lovely park. In addition the town will lose one of the few places where a bus or truck can legally pull over and give some respite for the drivers to get their bearings or have a coffee.
As for how our leaders feel about this idea, here are two quotes borrowed from the Coaster:
Deputy Mayor Nick Williams, a member of the Township’s parking task force said, “We are going to move forward with these recommendations, and I think the task force did a good job.”
Resident Joyce Klein who is a member of the OGHOA and chairman of their parking committee said, “This is a great start* but I hope to think that this is the beginning and not the end of the parking study.” She is also on the task force.
So we will get some more spaces, but we don’t need more congestion and density as the price to pay in our residential areas while the town continues its slide downhill. The policy makers think that this will be wonderful, but do you think these task force people are doing the right thing?
It seems that they believe that all Grovers care about is parking and that we will accept any new spaces no matter the price. Do you think the task force gave any consideration to the appearance of our town—–how about the more important variables such as air, space and light? How about our quality of life?
This plan of squeezing more cars onto our streets fits in with the worrisome current pattern of more condos, more density, and more crowding. Making more spaces is not necessarily better than leaving those streets alone.
Who is this really helping?–the commercial and real estate interests, or the people who live here? Help the residents with parking stickers and do something to reduce the numbers of cars coming into town and the number of town-clogging events that are too often and create temporary paralysis for OG tax payers. Or build a parking garage somewhere.
This plan will be implemented by Memorial Day. Other ideas are also being considered, including even more diagonal parking on other parts of Central Avenue.
When it comes to policies that hurt our historic town, if no one complains, they will soon do it again:
MARILYN MONROE “Do It Again.”
If my memory is correct, this is similar to the parking plan proposed by Republican candidates for town council last November, Fornino and Storey. They were criticized for the idea. How ironic, that the Democratic town council likes this idea now. Also, after one year that’s all the parking task force comes up with?
Right now there are three vehicles permanently parked on my short, narrow street behind the Auditorium. All out of state, PA and FLA plates. The owners don’t live on this block and they’ve been sitting there for months. Depending on how ‘kindly’ people park daily here there’s only about 16 – 18 spots on a good day.
On weekends any available spot is grabbed by AP meter avoiders. The street is so narrow that if a car is parked too far from the curb, happens a lot, the trash and recycle trucks can’t even go down the street for pick-ups. Warehousing is an issue whether anyone wants to admit it or not. It’s actually an issue that can be solved by alternate side of the street parking rules during the off season.
Dave, there are also some who park cars along the boardwalk and use them as beach lockers all season long. Never moved.
Buy a useless motorized scooter and reserve your own parking space. Been proven to be an issue that nobody wants to stop in Ocean Grove.
Joe: Thank you for your out-of-the-box suggestion. I think the cures depend on which constituency one is trying to help;
For example, the merchants might like to limit the time spent in one of those downtown locations. I think 3 hours was suggested but not implemented. The cure for that would have to be meters or parking monitors.
Just a thought about all this: Avon does a seaonal thing where the first few blocks off Ocean have one side be angled parking in the summer then regular curbside parking in the winter. What if the town pursued something similar?
It was my understanding that at the OG Parking task force meeting held by the OGHOA diagonal parking was not a consideration because it was against RSIS standards because diagonal parking was only allowed in commercial areas. There is no way that Central Ave. between Heck and Webb could be considered commercial. We can’t keep allowing the Mother Ship to ignore state rules and give us half-baked so called solutions that do not address the problem. Give us residential permit parking on one side of the street and move on.
As far as limiting the number of cars in town, one helpful step would be to cease all further approvals for condos. They always increase the number of cars compared to single family homes. Following the law vis a vis RSIS standards would also be a big help looking into the future.
I’m not referring to THE boardwalk reBUILDING after Sandy, rather to on-going maintenance to the boardwalk and other monies that the State provides to OG to foster tourism. I’m also not talking about RSIS standards for new construction/hotels. Rather, that residents of OG can’t on one hand accept money that promotes tourism (and improves the overall town), and on the other hand say only Residents can park in certain spots.
Many years ago, I could ride my bicycle down Main Avenue, it wasn’t considered
careless or reckless.
Today, I would be taking my life in my hands.
We have morphed from laid back into congested, hectic, and construction zones.
And it isn’t even Summer yet.
Tom. I agree with most of what you said but not without a few disagreements. Those parking spots along Firemen’s Park as well as other northern Main Ave. spots are very convenient to Asburians and their visitors, and they will devour the diagonal spots in the Grove; free being not a bad incentive.
In fact, the little street behind the Windmill is a favorite location for the AP employees to park.
And you said that “It’s not a bad idea” but surely you meant to say, “It’s not a good idea” because such ideas are never not a bad idea. From your friend Not Paul @Blogfinger.
I think its not a bad idea. If we are lucky, the new spots will seem far enough from AP as not to be used by the Asbury Parkers. That way when they park in front of my house I might find a spot near Main instead of near Broadway. Also, the fact that the town is actually doing something might be taken as recognition of a problem and a deisre to address it and hopefully not just a token action. That being said, more spots alone is not a complete solution – if you build it, they will come. They need to do something to help residents park near their residence during peak periods.
Nobody has mentioned how difficult it is to pull out onto Main Avenue where the diagonal parking already exists. I often drive west on the side streets and then enter Main Ave. where the parallel parking
allows much better (read safer) visibility.
Bringing diagonal parking all the way to the entry gates is going to exacerbate the problem.
There has been no actual plan put forth regarding “restricting the number of cars entering the Grove.” That idea is now just a concept, among some other suggestions, to enlarge the discussion of parking to be about more than just producing more parking spaces.
When Belmar shut down in June, 2015, because the town could not accommodate any more cars or people due to a seafood festival, it provides an example of this taken to an extreme.
The State of New Jersey did not give us money for boardwalk repairs. That money eventually came from FEMA (Federal funds) after Sandy, and I never saw any stipulation to connect that issue to parking.
RSIS is a NJ state standard governing parking in relation to new construction or new land uses such as if an old hotel were to be converted to a rehab center.
The State will not allow you to receive tourist money (for things like Boardwalk repairs, amongst others) and at the same time have resident only parking. These 2 issues are at odds with each other – one promotes bringing people to OG, the other prevents them from parking if they do arrive.
The suggestion of possible restriction of the number of cars entering into our town is not the answer and how would that even work – with there being so many different streets that visitors can enter town from?
Also, even if possible to create this restriction, it would negatively affect the businesses in town. Don’t we want to see them succeed and don’t we want to see this town flourish and not crumble like it did in the past?
I think the only possible way to make the residents happy is to give each household 2 parking stickers per house & perhaps 1 separate sticker for their visitors (family or friends visiting them). This will allow all residents to easily have the opportunity to park in front of their own home and not park 10 blocks away or sometimes not even in the town.
All visitors, including those renting a vacation home in town – will have to park their car in designated visiting parking spaces (i.e.: the diagonal parking spaces on Ocean Ave, the parking lots, the additional diagonal parking spaces, unless they can use the additional sticker for company – that their landlord can provide to them for their stay.)
If anyone were to park their vehicle in an area that was not designated for visiting parking ( and they didn’t have a resident parking sticker ) then perhaps they are ticketed and will need to move their vehicle.
This option makes the most sense to me, but I’m not an expert, but just a concerned resident.
I’ve raised this issue in the past and was told by Mary Beth Jahn in a past post that this wasn’t a viable solution since it violates the RSIS standard. I have no idea if it does since I’m still confused by the open disregard of RSIS enforcement concerning the condo parking issues.
It was disappointing to me that the Parking Task Force did not recognize that the number of available parking spaces in our ‘shared parking lot’..(the streets)
have been evaporating each time a Condo project is approved in our Historic District.
The Township Committee is the main source of our parking problems.