Sherman Blocks Angle Parking Move For Downtown Area

April 14, 1931

Traffic Department Instructed to Study Other Points Where Lights Needed

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Angle parking will not be restored in the downtown district at the request of merchants, it was decided at the city council meeting yesterday.

Lights and parallel parking will probably be resumed in Five Points, as soon as other outlying suburban districts are similarly equipped, R. E. Sherman said.

Giving his reasons why angle parking should not be restored, Sherman said:

“Not an expert has written an opinion, or an article, on the subject of traffic control in the cities but who state angle parking and lights would not work together. The model traffic ordinance worked out by the United States department of commerce, for the guidance of American cities, made the same statement.

Similar Views Here

“Our own traffic department coincides with that view; so does the local safety council.

“In my opinion a comparison of Five Points, where there are only two lights in one block and that had ever been under light control, with the entire business section is not a proper comparison.

“A proper comparison with Five Points is that business district at Alta Vista, the one at Dyer street near the entrance to Fort Bliss, the one at Alameda and Piedras, and the one at Piedras and Richmond.

“Five Points is an isolated district, located two and a half miles from the remainder of our traffic light system. The traveling public can dodge Five Points, but it cannot dodge the entire business district.”

Study Other Districts

Telegrams sent by the police department proved that no city with a street width comparable to that of El Paso is using angle parking with lights, Sherman argued.

“It will be the policy of the incoming administration to go forward, not backward,” said Sherman. “It will be our policy, as rapidly as funds will permit, to extend the lights, equipping other suburban districts, coincidentally with that to restore the lights at Five Points, and restore parallel parking. Then the question cannot arise of discrimination for any one section of the city as against the other.”

Traffic and engineering departments were instructed to make a study and report to the council on the priority of outlying points where the lights should be installed.