I think everybody agrees that disabled parking spaces are a good thing. But should there also be special parking spaces reserved for pregnant women and people with small children? One woman from Charlottetown thinks there should be, and she’s getting support from the local city council.
Angela Court has a daughter named Abigail. Abigail is now turning into a toddler and needs her mother’s full attention – all the time. Angela experienced a lot of difficulties with parking downtown, especially during the last period of her pregnancy and now that she has a small child. She even says she’s given up shopping downtown because of the hassle.
Now I read that there’s already a lack of parking spaces in downtown Charlottetown that people who want to park their car have to deal with. Angela says finding a place to park is even more of a hassle when you’re pregnant. She wrote a letter to the city council to suggest pink parking spaces reserved for pregnant women and people with small children. I had never heard of these pink parking spaces, but after some Googling I noticed they already exist in some places.
Angela doesn’t want to compare her idea with disabled parking spaces. She thinks these pink parking spaces should be a customer service initiative, not a right. The city won’t have to enforce the parking spaces like they enforce blue badge zones. No, Angela believes that other people will respect and honour these special pink spaces and will keep them free for young mothers.
Councillor Villard supports Angela’s idea. We naturally reserve spaces for disabled people and expectant mothers often struggle with some of the same problems, he says. He fully supports the initiative and will take the proposal to the next city police committee meeting. He expects them to endorse the proposal.
Villard adds that expecting mothers and people with small children need to buy lots of things. Little children need clothes, baby food, diapers and so on. If these mothers don’t do their shopping downtown, the local business owners miss out. As Angela Court said: She would have done a lot of shopping at the local businesses downtown in the last year if there was more accessible parking downtown.
I am curious to hear your opinion on this! Pink parking spaces, reserved for pregnant women and people with small children, in downtown areas to encourage these people to shop at local businesses. Is this a good development or do cities have to be careful with who they give special privileges? Is it even necessary to have special places for pregnant women? Now I’ve never been pregnant, so I don’t know… And do you thing Angela’s expectations about enforcement are right? Will other people honour the pink parking spaces when often they don’t even respect blue parking spaces? Join the discussion!
