NORTH ADAMS - Diagonal parking will be re-introduced on the north side of Main Street, between Eagle and Holden streets, in the coming week.
Residents will receive notice of the start date through the city's reversecall system.
"It's going to happen a week sooner than we originally thought," Mayor Richard J. Alcombright said Friday. "We were thinking it would happen the third or fourth week of July, but we received a call from the striping company, saying they were coming. We hustled to get informational posters out to the local businesses as a way to get the word out."
He said the striping company will begin work next week, starting first in city parking lots before work on Main Street commences.
"The design was professionally rendered with our first consideration being the safety of our residents," Alcombright said. "The design will result in eight new spaces. We are very confident that this change will help to slow traffic."
The plan, which was approved by the City Council and the city's Traffic Commission earlier this year, will run through June 2013.
"During this time, we will monitor the project closely," the mayor said. "During the discussions at council earlier this year, many people were questioning what we were going to use for parameters to measure the success of the diagonal parking. I think it's pretty rhetorical. We'll measure it by the incidences - do we have three tail lights being knocked out
However, Alcombright said the change in parking should be intuitive for the majority of drivers.
"When you think about the parking at Cumberland Farms or in large retail parking lots such as Big Y and Walmart, almost all of the time drivers are backing out of spaces that are straight and have limited lines of sight," he said. "If drivers just use the same type of sense and care, there shouldn't be many problems."
Parking in the diagonal spaces will be free until next summer.
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