Parking 101

From KTRK today comes the exciting news that the city will hold classes to teach suburbanites how to park downtown. The main message, apparently, is that if you park a couple of blocks away from your destination rather than trying to park right outside the front door, you'll have a much better chance of finding a parking space. The hell you say! Walk? You gotta be kidding.

The classes are the result of a surge of concern that people don't really know how to park downtown. In car-centric Houston, our first instinct is to try to park as close to wherever we're going as possible, but that doesn't really lend itself to parking in an urban setting. As the Downtown District's Bob Eury rather inexplicably told KTRK:

"If you go to the grocery store, I am almost positive and I know I do," said Bob Eury with the Downtown District. "I will always drive up to the front door. And then I will drive away from the front door to find a place to put my car."

Uh ... yeah. Houstonist isn't sure what all the fuss is about: We rarely have trouble finding a parking place downtown, but we're willing to walk a few blocks. Looks like we won't need to attend those parking classes after all.