I live close enough to the Stamford Train station that I could use it to save a little time by grabbing one of its many express trains once in a while – but I don’t.

First off, the exit for the Stamford Metro-North station is the *first* exit where I-95 traffic officially comes to a screaming halt – and it can happen anytime, day or night. Similarly, Stamford’s horrific lack of signage on its streets and penchant for quirky frontage roads keeps me out of the city at large most of the time anyway.

But the real problem is the parking situation – its confusing, busy, and its a long walk to your train – so I have to add more time to compensate for all of that nonsense than an express train would save me anyway.

My favorite part of parking in Stamford is that there is this this paid lot which *preceeds* the train station lot, which is designed for use by the tenants of the office building there – but they will gladly take your money for train station parking, because they charge more. Plus, sometimes they are full, but it is designed so you cannot turn around and leave. I frequently see people visiting the station for the first time trying to back out of that garage in complete and utter confusion.

Similarly, if you get off the train after hours, good freaking luck trying to find your way back to your car in that lot! Every night there are, again, newbies who are wandering around the lobby of that office building wondering how the hell to get to their car.

OK, now what was I talking about? Oh yeah – the parking situation at Stamford MNR Station is about to turn into your worst nightmare, as in 2010, a project to rebuild the garage will remove 800 spots for TWO YEARS (plus all the spots the construction workers will take up with their personal vehicles).

In general, the theme of how Stamford commuters should prepare to deal with this situation was to look for parking at Greenwich and Glenbrook (!!?) (sorry that last line just made me spit-take coffee all over my keyboard!)

Other ideas that were tossed around at the Commuter Rail Council meeting last night:

- Use surface streets – RIGHT, because surface parking is so abundant and underused in that neighborhood, and I am sure no one would mind walking the neighborhood in back of the train station at night, because its so enchanting and safe. Everyone is familiar with this block, because, since there is no where to stop to pick up people at the train station, rides need to circle the block constantly until they see their meetup.

- Shuttle buses to remote lots – because no one minds an extra 20 minutes added to their commute every day – am I right?

- One commenter on the Advocate story predicted that the inevitable insolvency of the adjacent UBS would make their parking spaces available – now that’s the type of optimism this discussion was missing!

Oh, and by the way, parking passes for the existing garage are on a 1-3 year waiting list, and no word yet on how Stamford is going to decide which passholders will get the boot when construction starts.

Oh Stamford, no wonder Jim transferred back to Scranton – they have such great parking!

via The Stamford Advocate

(photo by flickr user ƒrancesca)