Reserved parking--Discuss
So, public buildings always have a number of handicapped parking spaces in front of them. I get that.
My work building even has a couple of spaces in front reserved for expectant mothers. I get that, too.
My gym, however, has something like 8 spaces reserved in front (immediately following the handicapped spaces) for "fuel efficient vehicles." This was a new one to me. And the funny thing is, not a single car that's ever parked there could be identified as "fuel efficient"--they're usually SUVs, minivans, or regular cars like mine that aren't necessarily known for their fuel efficiency.
Now, just because I was curious, I looked up sales of hybrid cars* and found that they make up about 2% of all US new vehicle sales. And this parking lot has 348 parking spaces, so the 8 spaces reserved for fuel-efficient vehicles would make up about 2.3% of the total, which at least roughly matches. Since this is such a new thing for me, I checked on their website to see if there was some kind of statement about encouraging people to use fuel-efficient vehicles or some such thing, but couldn't find anything more than just the number of parking spaces in the lot.
What do you think of this new and different idea? Ridiculous and unreasonable? Bold and innovative way to encourage people to conserve fuel? Discuss.
*It can be argued that some non-hybrid cars could be termed as "fuel-efficient," but for the sake of keeping this simple, a measure only of hybrid cars was used.
My work building even has a couple of spaces in front reserved for expectant mothers. I get that, too.
My gym, however, has something like 8 spaces reserved in front (immediately following the handicapped spaces) for "fuel efficient vehicles." This was a new one to me. And the funny thing is, not a single car that's ever parked there could be identified as "fuel efficient"--they're usually SUVs, minivans, or regular cars like mine that aren't necessarily known for their fuel efficiency.
Now, just because I was curious, I looked up sales of hybrid cars* and found that they make up about 2% of all US new vehicle sales. And this parking lot has 348 parking spaces, so the 8 spaces reserved for fuel-efficient vehicles would make up about 2.3% of the total, which at least roughly matches. Since this is such a new thing for me, I checked on their website to see if there was some kind of statement about encouraging people to use fuel-efficient vehicles or some such thing, but couldn't find anything more than just the number of parking spaces in the lot.
What do you think of this new and different idea? Ridiculous and unreasonable? Bold and innovative way to encourage people to conserve fuel? Discuss.
*It can be argued that some non-hybrid cars could be termed as "fuel-efficient," but for the sake of keeping this simple, a measure only of hybrid cars was used.