More Trolley News

Brutus from over there at ElPasoSpeak.com advises his readers that City Council is proposing a new ordinance restricting parking along the streetcar route:

From the proposed ordinance amendment:

“Except as provided in 12.90.50 below … no person shall stop, stand or park a vehicle on any side of a street within the Streetcar Route.”

That will offset any benefit a business owner might have gained from having the trolley run past his business.

But it’s a real problem, as illustrated by the picture above. There’s a trolley out on a test run, stymied by a beer truck stopped on the tracks in the Gayborhood. There’s not a lot of parking available there on Stanton, and not much space for beer trucks to stop to make a delivery.

I reckon those business owners will be hurt more than helped by having the streetcar run down the street, because new customers enticed by the trolley route won’t make up for the customers they lose because of parking.

Oh well. Now we own the streetcars. I hope they work.

5 comments

  1. Here in Albuquerque we have brand new ART bus stations, bus lanes all the way down Central Ave (rt 66). But the busses don’t work right and there was a wreck on the very first test run. 2 years + of construction, businesses forced to close due to the construction and a pain driving down Central and still no ART busses. I hope the trolleys in EP fare better.

  2. So no parking on Stanton? UTEP students who can’t afford UTEP’s outrageous parking fees will have to walk even further

    1. The students are parking on the residential side streets and causing pandemonium amongst my geratric neighbors. There’s going to be a Rim Area community meeting/lynching at the Presbyterian Church on Murchison to address this thorny issue Tuesday, October 23rd at about 6:00p.m. Texas is an open carry state and Ann Morgan Lilly is expected to show up with her pump action Remington 870 Wingmaster 12 guage shotgun. It’s the same gun she’s used with great effect in the past.

  3. I’m a UTEP grad student and I have to park in the neighborhood, Stanton street, anywhere I can feasibly park off Campus. In very many cases it is not UTEP parking prices that serve as the number one deterrent, it is the parking availability. Personally, I’ve debated numerous times about purchasing a permit only to drive around campus seeking parking, getting anxious about running late to class, finally feeling defeated, and grabbing a parking in the neighborhood. Neighborhood parking, by the way, isn’t really convenient for us. We cross our fingers as we cruise around and it is a trek to our classes without the benefit of shuttle service. The facts, there are ten thousand parking spaces and more than twenty-five thousand students. The only benefit I see to the streetcar is that maybe I can grab parking by my favorite watering hole on Rio Grande and hop on for a ride to school.

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