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Vail Daily letter: Add more parking? Reduce the speed limit?

I’m writing this letter in response to what I just witnessed on West Beaver Creek Boulevard. My heart goes out to the parent who loses a child because somebody’s driving 40 mph down that road and a child gets out of its parents hands because they’re so excited to go to the park and runs out into the street and gets hit by someone flying down the road.

Now that the city has changed the parking onto the north side of the road, there’s no safe haven for parents to put their children while they unload the car, the toys, the games, the barbecues — all of the things they were going to the park to do. Now, they’re at the hospital praying that their child survives the horrific accident that they just experienced.

The driver that was texting, late for work or on the phone and didn’t see that little boy or girl run out of his parents arms and into the street, the broken lives that are now a part of the community — I can only hope this is a fictional story that was created in my mind and never a reality on West Beaver Creek Boulevard, but I can’t help to think it’s impossible the way people speed down the street with parents and children getting out of their cars to go play at the park.



No parking allowed in the only actual parking lot available — why has it been turned into a loading zone only? Do we really need 15 loading spaces? Why? Maybe it should be turned into family parking? Who’s going to unload their 2-, 3-, 4-year-old and then go park across the street?

Should the speed limit on West Beaver Creek Boulevard be reduced to 15 mph? Should we increase the police presence? I used to see police patrolling all the time, and now I barely ever see them. Maybe on the north side of the cars a walking path can be created to the crosswalk. I’m afraid creating a crosswalk is just not enough.

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Joe Shankland

Avon


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