this is the editorial from today's T&T regarding on-street parking on Main Street:
Going from bad to worse
http://22864.vws.magma.ca/index.php?&article_id=8715
Is Main Street parking the lifeline downtown needs?
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Times & Transcript
We Say: Beleaguered Main Street gets no help from parking plan
No one will argue that Moncton's downtown, particularly on Main Street, needs help.
And it might even have been argued that, under different circumstances, some help would be available in the form of added parking on Main Street.
For example motorists who will soon wish to avoid a narrower, choked-off Main Street might have chosen to travel by Boulevard Assomption had Moncton City Council done that job right when they had the chance.
Boulevard Assomption could have been a fourlane throughfare, but instead council bowed to the desires of its engineering department and settled for a dog's breakfast of confusing turning lanes and only two actual lanes for two-way traffic.
As for Main Street, it is already an inefficient mess which is about to get even messier. Ways to avoid Main are limited without a properly designed Assomption, so many motorists will still attempt to move from one end of Metro to the other via Main.
But this main artery, already seriously clogged, will now lose the convenience of its turning lanes, which will have to be removed to make room for parking spots.
Main Street will of course still have its sidewalk cafes, which are very nice but still thwart any possibility of widening the street, which would have been very handy considering all the room which will now be taken up with those parking spots. It should be tight going indeed and motorists will have to be attentive, as well as patient.
Bottom line, this whole scheme seems to benefit no one but the City itself, which will enjoy whatever revenue from the new parking meters is not lost to the cost of clearing snow from them in the winter.
But perhaps, as they say, it's an ill wind indeed that blows no one any good.
Negotiating Main Street will become so dicey for driving shoppers that it will likely make the chaos at the Champlain Place and Trinity malls actually seem attractive by comparison.
Council, hopefully with the help of Downtown Moncton Inc., needs to go back to the drawing board.
Personal note:
It's interesting the sudden reversal in the editorial stance of the newspaper on this issue.....
The T&T has brought up the topic about what to do for Main Street on many occasions over the last several years, usually leaning towards turning it into a full time pedestrian mall or promoting on-street parking in some form. The status quo never seemed to be an option for the paper.
Well, suddenly the paper seems to be in favour of the status quo! Perhaps they have been listening to us on this forum!! 
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On street parking on Main St will reduce the street to two lanes with no turning lanes. The loss of the left turning lanes will contribute significantly to traffic congestion, especially at rush hour. Even now, it can take 10 minutes or more to travel 6-8 city blocks at the height of rush hour. You could probably safely double this in the future.
When the events centre gets built on Main St in a few years time, not only will you have morning and afternoon rush hours, but additional evening rush hours around scheduled games and concerts. Just imagine 9-10,000 people all trying to arrive at the events centre at roughly the same time, with a good portion of the attendees coming from Dieppe and driving up the narrowed and choked Main St to get there. It would not be a happy sight!! 
The on street parking on Main St will all be parallel parking. Parallel parking is not popular with motorists at the best of times. Can you imagine how popular it would be for a driver to reverse into a parking space with several dozen cars impatiently waiting for him. I'm willing to bet that lots of people will avoid using these parking spots!! 
I would be concerned about how narrow the street will be. I don't know about you, but I personally would not enjoy eating a meal downtown if I parallel parked on Main St. I would be worried the whole time I was eating that somebody would make a mistake navigating the (narrowed) street and bung my side mirror. Nope, I can guarantee you that I would go out of my way not to park on Main St and would choose a side street to park instead.
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If the city is determined to (permanently) take this course, then I think the big fix will be necessary...........
What I mean by this is that Main St will have to cease being Main St. I think through traffic will have to be actively diverted onto Assomption Blvd.
What I would do would be to tear down (and relocate) the Codiac Police HQ and reallign East Main St so that it feeds directly onto Assomption Blvd. I would make Assomption a four lane street with a median for it's entire length. I would also extend Assomption beyond Vaughan Harvey and have it reconnect with a (realligned) West Main St somewhere around the Honda and Toyota dealerships.
By doing this, then there would again be an unobstructed direct route through downtown but it would avoid the central portions of Main St. With traffic diverted in such a manner, then it wouldn't matter so much what experiments the meddling city planning department would have in store for Main St.
This solution however would cost tens of millions of dollars and I don't imagine the city would be interested in it. As such, Main St will remain the only direct east/west route through the core. Since Main St serves such a critical function, nothing should be done to it that would interfere with efficient traffic flow.
On street parallel parking on Main St is a bad, BAD, BAD idea!!!
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Don't they have standard automatic retractable side mirrors? 
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