A large vehicle protrudes into the roadway, parked in the new diagonal parking zone , residential area, adjacent to Firemen’s Park. Main Avenue, OG. 6/28/17 © Blogfinger photo.
June 28, 2017. Today new diagonal parking stripes were painted along a residential strip from Firemen’s Park west to the end of the Grove. Aside from the new found ugliness, new hazards are created due to visibility issues. Bikers need to swing out into the middle of the road. Lost are the parallel spaces along the park where truckers, bus drivers, and visitors could pull over to find their bearings or just take a rest.
This new parking scheme makes things worse, not better. In Spring Lake, for example, no residential streets have diagonal parking, and no commercial streets have diagonal parking on both sides, as occurs in Ocean Grove.
Spring Lake main commercial street 3rd Avenue. Diagonal on only one side. Blogfinger photo 6/28/17. ©
THE KLEZMONAUTS:
The strip of curb that runs along Firemen’s park has 11 spaces. It is so few because of the orange “no parking” striping at either end and in the middle. Before the new diagonal parking, there was room for about 6 or 7 cars to parallel park. That would be a net gain of maybe 4 or 5 spaces only. Is it worth it?
Since Neptune Township deigns to give us Grovers ugly and dangerous diagonal parking along Main Avenue, they should insist on only allowing compact cars to park there.
Penny
Wouldn’t it be funny if long SUVs and trucks parked across from each other for the July 4th parade. Then, the stupidity of the Neptune Committee would become apparent.
Part of the reason that we moved here was that we felt safe to have our children walk and ride their bikes in the neighborhood, without our supervision. We wanted them to feel like children should feel when they are given a little bit of freedom to explore, within safe limits of a safe town.
Now we no longer feel safety, as it is impossible to safely cross the street, because one can not see if a car is driving on the road (as the diagonal cars/big trucks are parked).
Traffic lights are now needed to just be able to cross the street safely. It is impossible to see if anyone is driving in the street, until you walk or drive in the middle of the road. This is beyond dangerous and we are just asking for trouble.
Joe: This post did not mention Avon. OG is much different than Avon in terms of the demands and stresses on the residents. I mentioned Spring Lake just to illustrate how another town does it better. I never said that “it can’t work here.” The new diagonal parking here will create some more spaces, but at a price. It’s not a solution to the Grove’s parking problems where the demand for spaces is often huge while the number of spaces will always be inadequate even with this new striping.—Paul
Every successful community, like Spring Lake, has the same thing in common, good planning; and every failed community, like Neptune, has the same thing in common, failed zoning. Good zoning produces good schools, a healthy community and high property values. Failed zoning produces crime, a failed school system, and low property values as in Neptune.
For the last 40 years, Neptune has hired planners that have promoted a failed community. The failure to uphold state law is a clear sign of a failed planner. The failure to require state mandated parking for each condo granted is a sign of a failed planner. The increasing of Ocean Grove’s high density is clearly the sign of a failed planner who has used word games to circumvent the law for the greed of developers.
Neptune is doomed to continue its long history of failure and Ocean Grove along with it until it learns from successful communities and hires a planner who will work to protect and improve the community instead of helping to line the pockets of greedy developers.
Kevin Chambers
Avon could be characterized as “A town all about its residents” and they have angled parking on many streets. Why can it work there but not here?
I measured streets in nearby towns:
Belmar: 66 feet wide on Ocean Ave, diagonal (metered) East side, West side parallel parking (free).
Avon: 45 feet wide on Ocean Ave, diagonal (free) parking East side, no parking at all West side.
Lincoln, Sylvania Aves, etc. going West from beach are 55 feet wide and have SEASONAL diagonal parking one side (parallel off season), other side parallel parking (all free).
Bradley Beach: 66 feet wide on Ocean Ave, diagonal parking both sides (East side metered).
Ocean Grove: only 48 feet wide on Ocean Ave with diagonal East side and parallel West side (only 3 feet wider than Avon with NO parking West side). Note the construction of the road on Ocean Avenue. It was made for parallel parking on both sides as was Main Ave in Ocean Grove, which is slightly wider – coming in at 55 feet – certainly NOT wide enough for diagonal parking on both sides.
And of course, Asbury Park has lots of paid parking that literally brings in millions of dollars for city services.
Regarding Spring Lake, this is a town that is all about its residents. The Chamber of Commerce has two events planned this summer: a sidewalk sale and an art walk. By the way, there are no meters in that town, and there is no problem parking.
Ocean Grove has been turned into a mish-mash due to years of inattention by Neptune Township. Spring Lake knows what it’s about.
Even Jack Green has a real estate agency there.