In his July 25 guest column [“Shuddering over Picture Main Street”] Eric Stahlberg II proposed a trial run on the lane reduction for Picture Main Street to test the effect of reducing the traffic lanes. Sounds good. Sometimes ideas on paper fail the test of practicality. Unless I’m mistaken, I remember many years ago it was proposed that it would be safer if cars backed into parking spaces on Main St. because of the hazards of backing out of a parking space. The city tested this out with a few parking spaces. The test showed that this was definitely not a good idea.
Theresa Labato
Northampton