Posted by Mr. Man, a resident of the Menlo Park: Allied Arts/Stanford Park neighborhood, on Mar 5, 2007 at 5:17 pm

Menlo Park has never gotten diagonal parking right in those serial parking lots between Menlo and Santa Cruz avenues and UNiversity and El Camino Real. If some of them are now 90 degrees, that can't be good.

The angles all wrong for parking or leaving a space that is anywhere between 90 degrees and about 60 degrees.

Those tight spots are not natural. You have to think about pulling in so as to match your car up with the lines and not ruin it for the people on either side of you by starting a chain reaction of bad parking.

When you pull out, you can't really see approaching cars. And the angles force you into another set of maneuverings except in reverse. And that's when you're lucky enough not to have others behind you and near you going through the same contortions as they leave.

A proper angle would simplify everything because people could get in and out quickly. The downside -- and I'm sure the Menlo Park merchants and public works people are quite aware of this -- is that parking spaces designed with natural angles reduce the total number of spaces available.

So who pays for this inconvenience in trying to park? We do, when we try to keep our hard-earned money in Menlo Park.

Like so many other decisions made by bureacrats, penny wise and pound foolish.

Posted by Mr. Parker, a resident of the Menlo Park: Downtown neighborhood, on Mar 7, 2007 at 3:14 pm

Speaking of a chain reaciton of bad parking, the Draeger's lot is a prime offender, especially the spaces along the side of the building.

For some reason, I always get stuck in between two cars (or SUVS) parked askew and thus, I am forced to also park crookedly. Then, I come out of the store, the two cars beside me have left, and I look like the idiot who can't navigate a parking space.

Posted by Car Parker, a resident of the Menlo Park: Downtown neighborhood, on Mar 14, 2007 at 1:12 pm

I always favor diagonal parking. Less chance of accident, and less chance of damage to your car from another driver's door.

Posted by Local Parker, a resident of the Menlo Park: Suburban Park/Lorelei Manor/Flood Park Triangle neighborhood, on Mar 15, 2007 at 10:23 am

I always prefer properly-angled diagonal parking spaces.

I go out of my way to avoid 90-degree parking spaces -

I detest them! I am well aware that a few more cars can

be put into parking lots that have 90-degree parking

spaces, and that is probably the reason this is done.

If these 90-degree spaces are wide enough. they are

not so bad, but those are very hard to find.

I often wonder of the planners who design 90-degree

spaces think our cars are made of rubber and can bend

in the middle....