I love Athens, but since I don't live there I'm going to take this opportunity to avoid getting into an email argument with your bat-poop crazy mayor and nutjob city council member (both judgements based solely on their stands on this issue...but it feels like a safe guess). Also, since like attracts like (and crazy attracts crazy) I'm sure they do hear more support than opposition. Doesn't make them any less idiotic.
When it comes to subjects like this.political lunacy is not limited to Athens.
Several years ago Hackensack,N.J. was trying to help a dying Central Business District (CBD).
The consultants they hired determined that the problem was that the two way street that ran through their CBD was slowing traffic down, especially with parallel parking.
Their solution? Make the street and its parallel sister street 1 way and get rid of parallel parking.
They made the streets 1 way,but kept the parking.The CBD continues to die.
Now the same consultants say traffic is going through the CBD too fast and they need to slow it down by going back to 2 way streets and keeping parallel parking.
Over 4 million dollars for an experiment.
Gee,now if someone wants to park,the traffic in that direction stops dead.
Yea that will encourage people to use those streets.