To the Editor: Parking spaces, parking spaces where have they gone? It seems that every time I say that parking in Old Town is becoming near impossible some uninformed member of one of our boards or commissions tries to tell me that that there are excess parking spaces in the Old and Historic District. Well, as all of you know that's not true. In fact, the parking situation is going to get worse as our esteemed transportation director continues to recommend to the council members that they take parking spaces away from us.The taking of the 27 parking spaces on upper King Street is a good lead-in followed by the taking of 66 parking spaces at the King Street Metro. The upper King Street spaces are going to be used to construct bicycle lanes. The Traffic and Parking Board has recommend to council not to follow the transportation director’s guidance in taking these spaces. On the other hand, the King Street Metro spaces will be used to "Q" more buses within the circular parking lot and while also providing new parking spaces for taxicabs on the west side of Diagonal Road. These parking spaces are very critical to Theismanns Restaurant and to the many businesses in the 1800 Diagonal Road office building. Just around the corner down King Street near the small Trifoile park, the Food Truck Task Force has just recommended the taking of 10 parking spaces to be dedicated for food trucks. Of course the food trucks will also take a number of other parking spaces at other venues in Old Town.Down King Street near the water on the Strand, the city intends to take Chadwicks parking lot (100 spaces) to develop a new park. Additionally, the SOLO Parking Company will lose 36 parking spaces in the old Art League Building which is soon to become a Carr Hotel. The hotel is only going to provide 69 parking spaces in its underground garage. That's to park the patrons of the 120 rooms in the hotel and the restaurant customers in their 120-seat dining room. Carr claims that the work force, a laughable 14 workers at any one time, will take public transportation to the hotel. My message to Carr is that the trolley does not start operating until 11:30 a.m. There is also a plan to remove many of the parking spaces on South Union Street. All of this will occur without the development of the two Robinson terminals. The density in this part of Old Town is about to explode, yet our city government doesn’t think it is necessary to create parking space replacements for all those spaces that they have been taken away. Townsend A. “Van” Van Fleet

Alexandria