Kansas City parking woes date back generations

• The city contemplated building a new parking garage or setting up a "parking hot line for the desperate commuter."

Yes, but: Such griping spans generations.

• "Maybe we will get some benefits from our trips to the moon, although a look at the terrain indicates it's not going to be very helpful in solving our parking space shortage," longtime columnist Bill Vaughan wrote in 1971.
• Three years later, shuttle buses helped "ease" the parking space shortage near Kemper Arena.

The intrigue: Sometimes, more parking is seen as the answer.

• "Parking has been a long-time problem in our city, and the parking-space shortage hurts our businesses," reads a 2015 letter to the Star.

Other times, more parking is to blame.

• When merchants demanded a "1-hour parking" rule to support businesses way back in 1931, a streetcar company bemoaned traffic slowing down streetcars and threatening public transit.

Wise words: "Every American city is confronted with a perplexing parking problem," the Kansas City Journal opined in 1940.

• "The average American motorist has an obdurate antipathy toward walking."

The bottom line: When you complain about parking, you're at least carrying on a local tradition.