Why you can't find parking

I'm wondering about these little Car2Go cars you see all over the village. I know it's a great concept, but are there too many just sitting around taking valuable parking spaces? We're a small village with limited parking, which has always been an issue here, especially street parking, and it seems that these small cars take up so many spaces, especially on weekends, when the Grove is the busiest.

I counted up to 15 cars in parking spaces on Saturday morning, there probably are more since I didn't drive up and down the whole Village, but these three cars are on Grand Avenue and there were three more parked across the street. That's six near the Mayfair.

There were a couple more on or near Matilda Street, one by the post office and three more on McFarlane down to the horseshoe at the end. Are we being used as a dumping ground by Car2Go? For the handful of people that might use these cars, the ratio is way off. It reminds me of when the taxi's used to do that up and down Virginia Street. That was put to a stop after many complaints. 

The turn over is not that quick, I've watched this over the past few months. On Saturday morning at 7:30 I took the very top photo. And then at 8 pm, this photo was taken; all 15 cars were there over 12 hours later,  not one car was moved. On Sunday morning, every single car was exactly where it had been Saturday morning, possibly Friday night, and on Sunday night, the cars were still not moved. That's 48 hours of blocked parking spaces which is about 10% of our street parking in the village.

I've asked people about it and it's crossed everyone's minds, so I'm not the only one wondering about this. Most people want them gone. They have said this, "I would like to see them gone." This comes from business owners and residents.  One suggested they have their own little parking area that they pay the Grove for. Right now they pay the Miami Parking Authority and we get nothing in return, just lack of parking for visitors.

It's one thing to use the parking space like Car2Go is doing, but to have so many cars taking up spaces without any customers attached to the cars is a bit much. What if we all parked our cars in valuable spaces and abandoned them? These cars took parking spaces away from people all weekend. Someone asked, "what's the difference, other cars would be there anyway?" Well, I think the other cars would carry people who are here to spend time, spend money and then leave. Not set up shop for their fleet of cars all weekend and keep people from parking.
I know there are garages, but people want street parking, we have gone over this for years. People prefer the metered parking.

Maybe they can put the cars in certain spaces like they do with the rent-a-bikes that are left in racks, instead of parking spaces that people need. Or maybe they can just reduce the amount of cars. If 15 cars are going to sit around all weekend, why not make it five? Or three? One business owner suggested three for the village when I asked. Maybe that's the perfect number.