GDOT's Mysterious Ways

The Greensboro Department of Transportation has been doing some sidewalk repair on Cypress Street in my neighborhood. That's very much appreciated, because our sidewalks are well-used by dog walkers, baby strollers, exercisers, kids, etc.

For reasons entirely unknown, however, the unrestricted parking on that same street in front of Aycock Middle School has been suddenly changed to a 2-hour limit from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. None of the neighbors I contacted on Cypress Street had been consulted or informed -- it just happened.

One resident, who has already lost a driveway to GDOT when the city decided to widen Yanceyville Street, now cannot park his car all day across from his house -- something he needs to do on trash pickup days.

Other neighbors need the parking for daytime visitors.

No neighbors had ever expressed any problems about parking on Cypress to the neighborhood association. So the obvious question is, who made the change, and why?

One neighbor speculated,

It really looks like another boneheaded act by a mid-level minor functionary at city hall.

It does look that way, doesn't it? Because now, for residents to use the parking as they have in the past, they will have to try to convince the city to issue residents-only on-street parking stickers like those that are used in College Hill.

Now tell me, what exactly is the point of changing the parking on a street that had no parking problems in the first place, so that citizens are required to seek an even more bureaucratic solution to something that was itself a "solution" to a non-problem?

It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.