What Irritates You Monday

"What Irritates You Monday" is a meme thought up by Delores from TheFeathered Nest.

Here, on a Monday, we get a chance to vent our little, or not so little, things that irritate us.

It doesn't have to be something on that particular Monday, it can be anything that irritates you any day of any week.  

Today, my irritation is....

Parking Spaces.

 more specifically, the lack of them....

I'm not irritated for myself, since I don't drive a car, my concern is for others. 

You may have read in your newspapers that our Adelaide Oval is getting a makeover. 

A refurbishment. 

Rebuilt. 

Bigger, Better,  etc.

All well and good you might say, it will bring people into the city and the people will spend money. Councils and Governments like that sort of thing, as do retail businesses. 

The newer, bigger, oval is big enough to cater for tens of thousands of patrons at any one time. 

The parking spaces are for considerably less than that number.

Yes, LESS.  

By about two thirds I believe.

WTF??

Possibly some will travel in by bus or train or carpool, but still, to be allowing so few spaces is bordering on lunacy in my opinion. 

As far as I know, they've planned a single expanse of ground level parking. I could be wrong. 

But why not take the opportunity to build an underground parking section as well?** 

To cater for all those who decide to shop in the city before or after the football, cricket, whatever. They may even zip across the new multi-million dollar waste-of-money, oops, footbridge to the casino. 

The same problem exists in  shopping centres everywhere. 

Build a huge mall, surround it with single level parking spaces and sit back to watch people circling like vultures looking for an empty spot. 

Because people DON'T, park, shop, drive home. 

Really, they don't.

They park, bump into friends or meet up with them on purpose, have a coffee or lunch at a cafe, browse the shops, sit and chat, and maybe, eventually, they'll get around to doing their shopping. 

Depending on what suburb you're shopping in, you may just find a parking ticket under your windshield wiper when you get back to your car, because you forgot to go and move it after two hours. 

There are a few shopping centres that have multi-level carpark areas, Foodland at Norwood has two or three levels in a big block behind their store, across the road.

Arkaba shopping centre has two levels, one underground and the other level with the shops, plus another section off to one side. 

Burnside shopping centre, which seems to get bigger every year, has a huge underground carparking area as well as the spaces at ground level. 

Marion shopping centre, ditto and I'm sure there are others.

In some of the outer suburbs, carparks stretch out seemingly for miles, taking up valuable real estate, because no one thought of multi-level carparks.

Or perhaps no one was willing to pay for that amount of construction. I imagine building multi-level or underground isn't cheap.

And how many times have I seen work colleagues rush out of the store during working hours to go and move their cars?

This is another sore point. 

Dedicated parking spaces are not allocated for those who work at the shops, the planners just did not think that far ahead. 

What is really needed is a nice big mall, full of shops, and right next to it, a nice big multi-storey carpark with allocated spaces for the employees, perhaps a whole floor dedicated just for them, with the rest for shoppers, browsers, ladies who lunch and those getting their hair and nails done. 

It might be ugly, but so very useful. Or they could build in the same style as the shopping mall.....

And it would certainly draw the shopping public. 

Because parking within the city is a nightmare.

Or so I've heard. 

**they can't build above ground because it would spoil the look of the parklands.