Opinion: The Big Squeeze -- Compact Parking Spots

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For the longest time, it was the SUV drivers I blamed.

They’d squeeze their monstrosities into the smaller parking spaces marked ‘’compact’’ even when there were spacious, Hummer-sized spots a few yards away. That must have been the problem; a few yards away was a few yards too far away for them.

Behind the wheel of my compact, I fumed that the only thing ‘’compact’’ about these behemoths and their drivers was the size of the latter’s brain.

Try getting out of your own car when one of these beasts is parked next to it. This was the wheeled equivalent of those lot-to-lot McMansions.

Yet in the last few lots I’ve had to park in, I noticed that almost every space has been labeled a ‘’compact’’ space, and the space size has been shrunk to fit the label. Something makes me doubt that this is being done to encourage us to drive downsized cars. It’s a neat dodge to be able to claim more spaces in a lot that, by spatial math and the average car size, should have many fewer. To squeeze more money out of a parking lot, someone’s squeezing us in in the bargain.

If cities do regulate parking space size -- and something tells me they do -- they might want to have a look at how their rules are being followed or flouted On this, I can make common cause with SUV drivers, because we’re all getting pinched.