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Sarah Smiley of Bangor is the author of “Got Here As Soon As I Could” and “Dinner With The Smileys.”
In the early morning hours of Jan. 22, my teenage son received a parking violation for night parking outside our Bangor home. Later, we learned many of his friends, also parked outside their homes throughout the city, received a ticket as well. And when my son went to pay the ticket, there were people waiting, all with the same violation.
Apparently Bangor is cracking down on a parking rule that seemingly very few people understood until they got a ticket this month. Many people, myself included, thought Bangor followed parking regulations similar to other cities, like Portland, where street parking is only banned for weather-related events. Instead, Bangor has a blanket on-street-parking ban from midnight to 6 a.m., generally from sometime in November to April 1.
It’s right for Bangorians to be confused. To my knowledge, Bangor has not regularly enforced this rule since we moved here 16 years ago. I’ve raised three teenagers on a lot that is not unlike other in-town city lots: We have a single-car-width driveway that, due to zoning regulations and space, cannot be changed or improved. All three of my sons bought their own used car, after working at Hannaford, when they turned 16. Beginning in 2016, with our first teenage driver, we have been managing multiple drivers and multiple cars on a driveway meant for two.
My husband, a pilot for LifeFlight of Maine, works alternating 12-hour shifts beginning at 7 a.m. or 7 p.m. Our routine has always been that the teenagers park on the curb after work to not block my husband’s vehicle. On nights when it snows, we squeeze all the cars onto our single-lane driveway and go through an orchestrated “car carousel,” sometimes with up to four vehicles, to stack the cars according to who needs to leave first. The car carousel is not ideal, but we always believed it was only necessary a couple nights during the winter to make room for snow plows. Since 2016, when we began leaving a car on the street most nights, we have never received a ticket. Until this month.
My husband and I are nearing empty-nest years. Soon our single-lane driveway on the small in-town lot will be enough. However, had the city started enforcing this blanket ban eight years ago, when we were first beginning to manage multiple drivers and cars, we likely would have outgrown raising our family in-town when we outgrew our driveway.
By keeping a blanket, five-month, nighttime parking ban, I believe the city of Bangor is making it harder for growing families to continue living in town. I also believe the regulation makes it harder for residences where roommates share a driveway. In a time when the city is increasing density and removing minimum parking requirements for accessory dwelling units, a blanket, winter-long parking ban is directly in opposition to these goals. We can’t increase density and also take away people’s ability to park on the street five months of the year.
The Bangor City Council should look at the policies in other cities, where they’ve created ways to alert residents to periodic, weather-related parking bans, and where they even offer reduced rates at the parking garages during those bans. If cars need to be removed from the street between midnight to 6 a.m. for snow removal, then a parking ban is only necessary prior to and during a snowstorm. Anything else, I believe, like keeping a five-month parking ban that seems to serve no purpose most nights during the winter, is just creating an unnecessary burden on Bangor residents.
