For the past couple years, pilot programs have restricted parking on several Hartford streets to vehicles with resident passes, and the Hartford Parking Authority could make it a permanent change.
On Seymour Street, a block away from Hartford Hospital, employees and visitors used parallel park on the road so residents had nowhere to put their vehicles, until signs went up saying "No Parking Except With Resident Pass."
Kyle Krupa, a Hartford firefighter, presented the Parking Authority with 50 signatures from residents of Charter Oak Place, who he says are willing to pay $25 per year for a residential parking permit.
"I just want to park, that's all," Krupa said, describing to officials what it's like when he finishes an overnight shift and people who work downtown have left their cars on his street. "I come home from work, drive around in the morning, I have to go get breakfast. It's just ridiculous."
The Parking Authority officials at a public hearing were receptive to Krupa's petitions. They plan to engage the Sheldon-Charter Oak NRZ, one of 17 Neighborhood Revitalization Zones in Hartford.
"So it's through that, each organization, we sit down with them, address the parking issue, and within that NRZ, it's street by street, block by block, with residents concerned," said CEO Eric Booth. "So if the residents don't want it, we don't do it."
Columbia Street, off Capitol Avenue and thousands of state government workers' cubicles, developed a residential placard program of its own ten years ago.
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Other streets with pilot programs set to become permanent include Rosemont Street, where people going to clubs on North Main Street take up the street parking, and several blocks on Asylum HIll.
