One of the biggest complaints about downtown Hartford is  the parking.   High prices at some of the lots and garages, parking randomly banned at certain meters, and the lack of lines for street parking.   Lack of lines?

Downtown street parking is metered, but the parking spaces are not marked, like they are in other communities.  There are no lines indicating where to park, which leads to a free-for-all and a poor use of space, that reduces the number of available spaces and reduces parking fees collected by the city.    For example, one block may be long enough for ten cars to park, but often it can only hold five cars.      Why?  Take a look.  

These two open spots on Trumbull Street are too small for a car.  The distance was about six feet between cars.    If there were lines, parking like this wouldn’t happen. 

Help is on the way.  During  a taping of Face the State, newly elected Mayor Pedro Segarra told me the city will be painting parking spot lines on the streets.   He said it was not in the budget of the Perez administration.    It may seem like a small issue, and there are still larger parking problems to be fixed, but it is a start.

We certainly talked about other more serious things during his taping, and I’ll talk about that later.

You can watch the entire interview this Sunday morning at 11 on Face the State, only on Channel 3.