To the editor:

Thursday afternoon, about 5:15 p.m., I was traveling south on Lawrence Avenue and, as I approached the Ninth Street intersection, I sideswiped a car parked on the west side of the street. I was staying to the right because of the flood of cars turning north onto Lawrence from Ninth and apparently overcorrected.

As the owner of the offended car, and as I stood waiting for the police to come and then make a report, we watched the heavy traffic – larger vehicles having to pull into open spaces between parked cars to avoid head-on collisions with oncoming vehicles. Clearly Lawrence Avenue between Sixth and Ninth streets has exceeded its capacity and some remedy needs to be found: limiting on-street parking or widening the street (there is plenty of right-of-way).

And, as an additional issue, the car I struck was only parked on the street because the owner had been denied access to his driveway on Ninth by curb-replacement construction and was told that it was illegal for him to park on his lawn or drive over it to reach his driveway. Catch-22!

Betty Banks,
Lawrence