sides of the street

The decision to restrict curbside parking to one side of Beresford Creek Street defies the maxim "if it’s not broke, don’t fix it." In my many years living on the street, I’ve rarely experienced (or observed) a problem navigating safely between parked vehicles and residents seem well practiced in courteously yielding to other’s right of way. More importantly, this parking restriction may come with its own worse set of problems. The change seems illogical and even divisive; it forces some residents to park their vehicles where they don’t want to and where other residents don’t want them to. The resultant imbalance of parking resources may degrade not enhance safety. Some homeowners and their guests will be required to regularly cross an active street where it would otherwise be unnecessary. Depending on the location, contractors will be required to stage their operations across the street from the house at which they are working. This all increases opportunity for accidents. To the extent the change will incentivize more residents to park in their driveway, there is greater risk to safely backing into a street (and across a sidewalk) than pulling away from a curb in the direction of traffic. Since cars parked along a curb must be parked in orientation with traffic, the usual traffic pattern will change to some degree (promoting traffic through quieter cross streets). 

There may also be some dishonesty with the official justification for this change. I measured 24 feet of street width in front of my house; a small but critical difference to the 22 feet cited by the City. Also, were not these streets originally designed to accommodate two-sided parking? Has the design standard changed since then?

Regulating to the exception often requires people to act inconsistent with their own interests, which usually produces adverse consequences. In this case, fortunately, correction of the mistake is a simple matter removing a few misplaced "No Parking Any Time" signs.