I go to the post office at Yale and 11th Street pretty often. There is only one entrance to the parking lot that is marked as a legitimate entrance and that is from Yale. There is another place to exit – on 11th Street – but it is clearly marked by a DO NOT ENTER sign on 11th for one reason:
If a car entered from that angle, its only option would be to drive down the one lane of traffic in the wrong direction from the angle of the parked cars. Essentially, it would be like driving down a parking lot lane with all the cars angled away from you.
When this happens, the car has one of two options:
1. Drive against traffic in an extremely narrow lane that forces oncoming traffic to stop.
2. Make a crazy turn to the right to go around the circular outside of the lot that usually requires stopping, backing up, turning, stopping, backing up, until you get to an angle that allows a turn without going on the grass…again, blocking traffic.
This is a small lot. There are a lot of older folks who go to this post office. That adds up to some shakey driving conditions as it is. In addition, to get to the drive by letter drop, you have to enter and make a circle around the lot to get back to the box before exiting where you came in – cumbersome to say the least.
This is the reality of a small, neighborhood post office on limited land space and that’s fine. If everyone simply obeyed the posted signs, we’d all be fine and go about our business. But, that seems to be just too much to ask for people.
Just STOP trying to enter from 11th and we’ll all be happier. Just circle around the freaking block. It takes all of like 30 seconds and it makes everyone much happier.
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.