Sunlight is the best disinfectant! Tell the Baltimore Sun!

Baltimore Sun reporter Mary Gail Hare is interested in doing a story about the commuters' plight! Have you been ticketed recently? Towed? Have you had to drive because of the overcrowding? Email her as soon as you can, since she has a deadline: mary.gail.hare@baltsun.com.
Thanks, as always.

And now for a little comic relief...

Fellow train rider Pat, who dubs herself the "queen of Aberdeen," passed along this delightful development: Amtrak conductor Lee Murphy scored a big modeling career coup by posing pantless for the cover of BusinessWeek magazine earlier this month. Here he is:

More tickets!

Fellow commuter Raquel told me this morning (April 24) that she had gotten a $40 parking ticket within the last week. That's makes at least 2 waves of tickets in the last couple weeks. The parking crunch continues to be a costly problem for commuters who are just trying to go to work.

We don't want to park illegally!

We would rather park legally, but where?

Would the officials of Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, etc., prefer us to drive and waste gasoline, pollute the air, add to traffic congestion, worsen global warming, etc.? Is the city of Aberdeen trying to persuade us to move to some other community, which doesn't punish those who use public transportation?

There are so many quick, easy and cheap solutions to this problem, many of which have been posted here. Why is it taking so long for any kind of action?

The financial pain and government dysfunction continues!!!

On March 31, fellow train rider Jerry reported this:

"Last Thursday about 10 cars were ticketed for parking in the normal unmarked spots.

I went over to the police station and the officer in charge stated there was a complaint about one car, so they have to give a ticket to any car not in a marked spot."

Huh? A complaint about one car results in about 10 cars - parked in spaces that don't block anybody - getting ticketed?
That kind reasoning would get an F on a logic test. But it would get an A on a city revenue-generation test! Let's see - 10 tickets at $40 apiece...that's 400 quick bucks for the city! Not a bad return for less than an hour of an officer's time.

I know the mayor of Aberdeen has a lot of folks pressuring him for action on many issues, including development, water, etc., but this one is so easy to solve! Heck, it would probably only take a few hours of a planner's time to replan out the available space, and less than a day of a city maintenance crew to restripe both sides of the train station and create 10-20 more spots and ease the crunch at least somewhat.

Let's all take action to remind our elected officials of the ease and wisdom of making public transportation viable in Aberdeen. Call, email or write them to remind them of their promises!

Or maybe it's time for the commuters to stop waiting for government to act and take matters into our own hands?

Fellow commuters: why don't we just pitch in and buy a $25 bucket of white paint. I'll bet they wouldn't notice if we slapped down new stripes ourselves and turned those "illegal" parking spots into "legal" ones.

Comments?