Almost as soon as America’s favorite pastime finally got underway at Polar Park last month, one of Worcester’s favorite pastimes – griping about parking – came out swinging right alongside the bats in the Canal District.
By all accounts, the city and the Worcester Red Sox appeared to have delivered on the promise of a great ballpark experience. But perspectives on the parking issues spawned by the park’s opening have ranged from sanguine to exasperated.
Beyond the usual grumbling, some serious issues underpin the discussion that the city, and the neighborhood, need to work through. But maybe it’s finally time to think outside the four-wheeled box.
The same community of business owners that for so long supported the Pawtucket Red Sox’s move to the Canal District and saw it as the icing on the cake of its years-long, ground-up resuscitation of the neighborhood is now finding that fans are taking up valuable quick-turnover parking spots in front of their shops and restaurants and heading into the stadium.
In lieu of constructing acres of parking surrounding Polar Park, the city’s idea was to encourage people going to a baseball game to use any one of several municipal garages within walking distance, or to take advantage of a nearby private lot, then walk a few blocks to the game. A new garage is sprouting up across Madison Street and could open by August.
The new parking meter system recently introduced in the Canal District includes time limits designed to prevent ballgame parking in on-street spots, but there has been a grace period of warnings instead of fines, and fans have been taking advantage.
Canal District residents, on the other hand, are tired of feeling like an afterthought rather than an integral, essential part of their own neighborhood, and have expressed frustration that the free parking on public streets they enjoyed for so long evaporated almost overnight when they came out to find high-tech meters and “parking ambassadors,” and scrambled to make new arrangements after the cost of parking their cars just went from zero to expensive.
In avoiding building vast parking lots around the stadium – it probably wasn’t possible, anyway – the city did a better job than many other communities at making Polar Park fit a little better into the landscape of the neighborhood. But retraining a motoring populace that has basically enjoyed the freedom to park wherever they please since Worcester’s lanes were cobblestoned could prove a bigger challenge than city officials anticipated.
Surely the issues will get smoothed out over time. Some employee and monthly rate options have become available. Perhaps some sort of resident parking compromise will be struck. Planned increases in expired parking meter fines, and the actual enforcement needed to make the new rules stick, will likely get those storefront spots turning over again on game days.
But what if there was another way? What if there was some sort of magical invention that could transcend parking and spaces? What if it didn’t require fuel or even electricity or anything but calories?
Well, such a machine exists, and it’s called a bicycle. It’s been around in the same basic form since the 19th century, and consumers spent $4 billion gobbling them up over the past year to have something to do during the pandemic. It’s not for everyone, but if enough people realize that riding a bike is just as fun as it was when they bombed down a hill on that Huffy as a kid, and that a brand-new bike can be had for the price of a few months worth of gasoline, it could lead to less cars that need a spot to park.
On a bike, you realize that the city isn’t all that big, and it doesn’t take all that much time to get anywhere around here when you’re not stuck in traffic. And wherever you live, you’re close to an arterial road that will, in some way or another, get you downtown. And another thing: Depending on how far you live from Polar Park, you might be able to burn off everything you ate or drank during the game on the ride home.
The area around the stadium and in the newly redesigned Kelley Square “peanut” includes some reasonable accommodations for bikes. The new sidewalks on Madison Street near the stadium are wide enough for bikes and pedestrians and even encourage cyclists with some signage. Also, a short strip of “contraflow” separated bike lane goes away from the stadium on Harding Street toward Union Station.
There have been painted bike lanes in the Canal District for years, and they are a mixed bag. They are in between the parking spots and the right-of-way, so there’s a constant threat of getting “doored” when a motorist gets out of a vehicle. The Kelley Square roundabout is easy enough to navigate on a bicycle, but those wary of taking on the new challenge can just follow signage that leapfrogs cyclists around it on the wide sidewalks and crosswalks and deposits them near the stadium.
It’s not bad, really, and once you’ve made it to the stadium, there’s a row of eight gleaming, brand-new bike racks right in front of the main entrance. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but each one can accommodate at least a few bikes, and there is a small nook with a few more racks farther up alongside the stadium on Ash Street.
What a lovely turn of events: that the closest, most convenient parking for a baseball game at Polar Park ends up being free and reserved for bicycles. And while the nicest bike locks can still be broken by thieves, the Polar Park racks’ location out front amid the hustle and bustle and not off in some alley greatly increases the chances a parked bike will still be there when the game gets out.
There are a smattering of bike racks throughout the district, too, and there are more on the way – at Pickett Park, the former parking lot on Green Street. When completed, it will serve as a gateway to the outfield entrances to the ballpark.
Parking hiccups accompanying the opening of Polar Park highlight a broader issue – Worcester remains an overwhelmingly automobile-centric city. Driving is just about a requirement in order to live and/or work in the city, and making it easier to ride a bike or take a bus to Polar Park for a game has barely registered as a viable discussion throughout the process. That’s not unique to the ballpark project; painted bike lanes and “bicycles may use full lane” signage is about as good as it gets these days for cyclists in the city.
All the parking arguments bubbling up in the Canal District start from the point that it’s a given that people will be driving to games, or that it’s a given that people who live in the Canal District have cars. Like so many issues in the city, all the parking plans and traffic control measures don’t address the core issue: that too many cars are on the road in the first place, and not enough safe, convenient options to safely walk, bike or take a bus to work, to school, to the grocery store or to Polar Park to watch the Rochester Red Wings battle our Worcester Red Sox.
Realistically, the less than a dozen bike racks at Polar Park are probably plenty for the time being. But once a few fans get a taste of the simple pleasures of a bike ride to and from the park, and realize all the time they would have spent sitting in their cars in traffic was instead spent gliding around city streets, noticing things they would have missed, and enjoying the crisp air of a summer night, we might have a few converts on our hands.
