U.S. Supreme Court Decision Allowing Zoned Parking
The nearby urban development of Crystal City has large number of daily commuters. Either to avoid paying for parking, or because of lack of space, it was common for these commuters to park on residential streets in the nearby Arlington Ridge and Aurora Hills communities. This daily flood of out-of-town strangers into formerly tranquil and isolated neighborhoods caused many problems. Starting in 1968, the Arlington Ridge and Aurora Hills civic associations petitioned Arlington County for help with the situation. A zoned parking ordinance was established, the intent of which was:
to reduce hazardous traffic conditions resulting from the use of streets within areas zoned for residential uses for the parking of vehicles by persons using districts zoned for commercial or industrial uses . . .; to protect those districts from polluted air, excessive noise, and trash and refuse caused by the entry of such vehicles; to protect the residents of those districts from unreasonable burdens in gaining access to their residences; to preserve the character of those districts as residential districts; to promote efficiency in the maintenance of those streets in a clean and safe condition; to preserve the value of the property in those districts; and to preserve the safety of children and other pedestrians and traffic safety, and the peace, good order, comfort, convenience and welfare of the inhabitants of the County.
Crystal City successfully challenged these restrictions in court for many years. Finally, in 1977, a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court settled the issue once and for all. (See ARLINGTON COUNTY BOARD v. RICHARDS, 1977, No. 76-1418.) As a result of this decision, communities nationwide are now able to preserve the peace and tranquility of their own neighborhood streets thanks to the activism of the people of Arlington Ridge and Aurora Hills.
Read more about this topic: Arlington Ridge, Virginia
Famous quotes containing the words supreme, court, decision, allowing and/or parking:
“Few and signally blessed are those whom Jupiter has destined to be cabbage-planters. For they’ve always one foot on the ground and the other not far from it. Anyone is welcome to argue about felicity and supreme happiness. But the man who plants cabbages I now positively declare to be the happiest of mortals.”
—François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553)
“A friend i’the court is better than a penny in purse.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,—who is invariably the devil,—and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious “retreat” of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“the parking lot of the dead.”
—James Dickey (b. 1923)