Community Update

     Have you walked down Piedmont Avenue recently?  The sidewalks are a lot narrower than they used to be.  Between the parking ticket dispensers, phone equipment, No Parking signs, parking hours signs, the space for pedestrians has shrunk considerably.  For those of us who have our sight, these installations are merely an inconvenience. For the visually impaired, however, they could pose a dangerous hazard.  Combine those official intrusive notices and equipment with cafes that have sidewalk tables and businesses that put out sandwich board signs, and pedestrians have a veritable gauntlet to run on our street.    
The worst thing about these instrusions, however, is that they are not installed in a standard manner.  There doesn't seem to be any uniform distance from the curb for them.  Two signs with the same message will vary in their distance from the curb by several inches.  And the telephone equipment is sometimes on the curb side, usually overlapping the sidewalk by several inches, and sometimes on the other edge.
      I'm not asking that an Office for Standardizing Signage Placement be established.  But how about a little common sense in installing these notices and equipment?  Doesn't the phone company know that people walk on the sidewalk?  Why does the parking ticket dispenser have to be so far from the sidewalk edge?
    Do the people who install these things ever talk to the neighborhood folks who have to maneuver around them?  Do they ever stop shoppers and ask them what effect it will have on their route?  Do the planners take these considerations into their process?
     I'd love to see our Traffic Division or whoever is in charge of No Parking, No Parking 6-8 a.m., No Parking 2nd Thursdays 8-12 AM, etc, and AT&T think more about how their installation will affect the people who use the sidewalks, not just to get from their car to the restaurant or store they are patronizing, but on a daily basis.  What would it take to make that happen?