Ketchum's recent decision to call off back-in angle parking around the post office isn't a good sign.
Not only does Ketchum need to change in order to avoid economic extinction, it needs to innovate. That means residents, not just government, need to adapt to new ways of living, working—and driving.
Back-in angle parking is an idea that surfaced with the city's revitalization plan. Consultants proposed it because it makes streets shared by cars, cyclists and pedestrians safer.
It makes streets safer because drivers emerging from back-angle spots have a clear view of what ordinary parking puts behind them—small children, cyclists and pedestrians.
Back-in angle parking is not the norm in the rest of the country, but it is being tried in other cities. It hasn't been part of drivers' education courses, but it's really no more difficult than parallel parking—if other drivers cooperate.
The city's test area around the U.S. Post Office was a circus of the confused. Outright scofflaws made it worse. Even with the parking angles changed, some drivers refused to back in, parking nose-in despite the fact that when they emerged their car faced oncoming traffic. Other drivers refused to stop and give willing drivers the space to back into a back-angle spot.
Complaints about the test area were nonstop—indicators of a kind of a paralytic mental sclerosis that put Ketchum into its present economic doldrums.
Ketchum should not abandon its quest for safer parking and streets. It should pursue revitalization with pioneering vigor.
