The city recently proposed an idea to alleviate a big problem in downtown McMinnville, and I am in full support of the idea.

Public Works is proposing to add parking spots along the left side of S. Spring Street along the First National Bank building. This obviously isn’t great for those who can’t parallel park, but it is great for those who don’t want people driving backwards down that street.

Spring Street south of E. Main Street is a big victim of this exact problem given the weird layout of the road right now. The street primarily only runs southbound, but past a certain point, people can travel northbound but only briefly.

It is confusing and there are plenty of mess ups and mistakes in that area. Despite the “Do Not Enter” sign, people still decide to drive on through. Mostly to get access to the ATM at First National Bank, but some go right on through to Main Street. I think and I hope that this new proposal fixes this issue.

For one, we could always use more parking downtown. We have a booming downtown right now, and six more parking spaces would be great for our businesses. Another part of the proposal is to make the Spring Street a two-way from E. Colville Street all the way up to the turn in for the ATM.

This would obviously fix the existing problem of people technically breaking the law to enter that direction as of now. This would make that legal and honestly, logical. I’m not claiming to have driven past the “Do Not Enter” sign to get to the ATM, but I can see why it would be tempting.

The city also wants to close the entrance right across from the ATM entrance because too many pedestrians almost get hit there. Obviously blocking that would discourage people from entering the private lot and hitting people walking downtown.

The biggest problem I hope it fixes is driving backwards toward the Main Street intersection. I mean, if the big sign telling you not to enter isn’t enough, hopefully those who commit this infraction notice they don’t have a traffic light to tell them if they have the right of way.

That street isn’t the only site of this mistake. Most of downtown is subject to people driving backwards. I don’t understand how people get turned around so easily. I think this new proposal is a great one to solve a multitude of issues right there. 

My only concern now is the intersection of E. Main and S. Spring has had a lot of accidents, and many claim it’s a light issue. I personally think it’s more a “people are running the light issue.” But maybe this is a start to help that intersection and then they can figure out the problem at the High Street and Main Street intersection.

Standard reporter Taylor Moore can be reached at (931) 473-2191.