By Pascale Joachim (she/her/hers)
I’ve been a commuter all my life. I moved to Stratford when I was six, but rather than go to Eli Whitney or Wilcoxson Elementary, my parents thought All Saints Catholic School of Norwalk was the best choice for me and my older brother. The uniforms and curricula reminded them of the private schools they attended as kids in Haiti, and the faculty and staff were strict and professional, but kind and welcoming.
Driving to and from Norwalk every day for better part of six years is a blur. The habitual I-95 traffic became part of my routine, and the reason I can’t remember any of it is because I resented every second of it. I did anything I could to make the time pass; read, slept, quizzed myself on car makes and models. What was supposed to be a twenty-minute drive would often double, if not take an hour, resulting in waking up at 5 for a 7:25 a.m. bell.
I continued to commute through high school, but thankfully, I-95 became a thing of the past. I attended AITE, an inter-district magnet school in Stamford with a large student-commuter population, and they provided train and bus passes to get to and from school in a relatively timely manner. I had to wake up at the same time for the same bell, but at least there was a community of students who shared this burden with me, and we bonded over our resentment of early mornings, packed trains, and the occasional missed bus.
Now, I’ve graduated college and, ironically, commute for work. I take the train to Stamford, which sucks a little for a reason I will get to in a moment, but in some towns the train runs parallel to I-95 and the sight of pointless stop-and-go traffic is enough for me to suck it up and enjoy the ride.
I drive to the train station each working day and after four years of catching the train, I know to give myself a ten-minute window to get to the train station that’s about four minutes away to, a crucial point here, find parking.
To park at the Stratford train station costs $350 for twelve months, or $175 twice a year. I earn a decent amount at my job, and could pay the fee in exchange for peace of mind. But I, like a considerable amount of other Stratford natives, choose to save money and gamble every working day for a parking spot on Linden Avenue.
Linden Avenue is a short one-way road that runs between the Stratford train tracks and the highway. Its perfect position is ideal for commuters to park because it’s risk-free and costs nothing. I know I’ll have a good day when I find a parking spot. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a good day in quite some time.
I can assure you I would not write this article if my luck was hindered by the simple fact that too many cars park there and there’s just no space. My issue is the cars parked there leave excessive amounts of space in front and behind them, resulting in a considerable reduction of parking space available for other train-takers.
Every morning, there’s a 50-50 chance I’ll find a spot, but a 100% guarantee that Linden Ave. is littered with inconsiderate commuters. I simply cannot wrap my mind around what would possess someone with a 2012 Toyota Camry to park like they drive a Bentley. It’s immensely frustrating, and I don’t think it’s ridiculous to ask that people park with consideration for the other commuters that would like to park alongside them.
A perfect parking person that acknowledges others looking for a place to park:
The only remedy to this I can think of is marking parking spots onto the pavement, but I fear this will result in meters for each spot, effectively ruining the point of parking on Linden Avenue. For now, sharing my frustrations that have been festering for about a year will be enough. If not, my fellow Stratford commuters have been warned.
