Ald. Edwin Eisendrath (43rd) said Wednesday that he will not ask the Chicago City Council to consider a proposal to turn Lincoln Park’s 60614 ZIP code area into a residential permit parking zone.
Eisendrath said that based on the results of a mailed survey to ward residents and questionnaires filled out at a Tuesday night public meeting, he will not pursue a task force’s proposal for residential permit parking in the area.
“This doesn’t mean, though, that any of us are off the hook,” Eisendrath said. “There clearly is a congestion problem. And while it won’t be solved by turning the ward into a permit zone, it still needs to be addressed.”
At the Tuesday meeting, the alderman announced that of the 1,270 survey responses, 49 percent wanted no permit parking, 30 percent wanted one zone and 21 percent wanted the current system.
That sentiment was made obvious at the packed meeting, held in De Paul University’s Concert Hall. When the more than 600 questionnaires were reviewed Wednesday, most people preferred the current system of block-by-block permit parking based on residents’ requests, his office said.
Eisendrath said he wasn’t surprised by what he heard at the meeting, but that “it’s still very important to give people an opportunity to be heard. Clearly, they did not want a single permit zone.”
The proposed zone, one of several recommendations by the Lincoln Park Conservation Association’s parking task force, would have been bounded by North Avenue, the Chicago River, Ashland Avenue, Diversey Parkway and the western edge of Lincoln Park.
Two areas around Halsted Street, zones 142 and 143, have permit parking.
He said he will consider other suggestions made by the parking task force, but wouldn’t be specific.
Their suggestions include permit parking from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. around late-night bars on Lincoln Avenue, improved public transportation with direct phones to taxi services and share-a-ride taxi stands.
Eisendrath said he will be meeting with the leaders of the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce and the conservation association to try to come to a solution.
“Permit parking will be part of the solution,” he said. “It isn’t the solution.”
