100 Years Ago in Spokane: New laws proposed to ease car congestion

Auto congestion had become one of Spokane’s biggest problems and “radical” solutions were necessary to tackle the issue.

The city prosecutor had drawn up strict new parking laws, which cut the maximum parking term from one hour to 30 minutes in the downtown area. Three no-parking delivery zones would be created in every downtown block. Hotels would no longer have parking privileges on the street.

Double parking would be strictly forbidden.

Police said that a relatively new phenomenon – the parking lot – might help the situation on the streets. A new parking area had been established near Union Station. Yet the police chief said that an even better solution would be taking a streetcar into work instead of parking a car all day on the downtown streets.

From the bicycle beat: Perhaps not coincidentally, The Spokesman-Review wrote an editorial in praise of the bicycle – and it’s changing status.

“The bicycle today is not a plaything, but a workhorse,” the editors said. “It does not take the city dude on his flanneled and blazered way across the country roads, but it gets the workingman to his shop on time in the morning and saves him the price of carfare and the necessity of standing on crowded platforms.”

There were 3 million bicycles in daily use in the U.S., and 86% of owners used them to get to and from their jobs, according to a survey that the editorial cited.

“The automobile and its demonic offspring, the motorcycle, have made the bicycle’s day of glory seem remote indeed,” the editorial said. “… But the bicycle has settled down to be a useful rather than an ornamental citizen.”