The Umstead access issue isn't going away

The state Division of Parks and Recreation toyed for a year with the idea of opening a third automobile entrance to Umstead State Park (at Graylyn Drive), and it received a few hundred comments expressing sharp opinions on both sides.

The Raleigh City Council's Public Works Committee struggled this year with calls to erect "No Parking" signs in residential neighborhoods where Umstead users leave their cars There were sharp, competing opinions here, too.

State and city agencies helped create these problems. The Umstead maintenance gate at the corner of Trenton and Reedy Creek Roads became an even more appealing destination for park users after the city and the state extended the Reedy Creek Greenway west from the NC Museum of Art -- and stopped it there. The closest parking lot is two miles away at the art museum.

NCDOT banned parking on the state roads outside the Graylyn and Reedy Creek Road maintenance gates -- after it justified paving Graylyn by using high traffic counts that had been generated by those same parked cars.

Both the city and the state are wary of taking steps that will set uncontrollable precedents, cost money and perhaps create new sets of environmental, legal and political problems.

So the parks division refused this week to open the Graylyn gate. And the city council said it wasn't ready to discuss the committee's proposal to ban parking on one side of the street only, in a residential neighborhood near the Reedy Creek Road gate. (See today's story, with reader comments and map.)

This "No Parking" half measure is a compromise recommendaton that already is making both park patrons and home owners unhappy -- and it has not stopped them from blaming each other for the problem. Meanwhile, residents of other neighborhoods are waiting in line to demand equal treatment.

"It's not that we don't want people coming here," says David Messerly, who lives near the Reedy Creek Road gate. "We'd love to see a parking lot put in, so five times as many people could come here to use the park. I don't think it's fair to ask us to house 20 or 40 cars every day, parked on our streets by people who come to use a state facility nearby."

Umstead is a wonderful rural park that thousands of urban residents want to use. The main entrances aren't sufficient. Access to the most desired trails is slow from the Glenwood Avenue gate, and it requires a long slog through the woods for people who use the Harrison Avenue gate.

The so-called "neighborhood access" maintenance road gates are appealing to lots of hikers, bikers and runners. They need places to park, other than on residential streets nearby.

It'll take a couple of mayors (this is a Cary issue, too -- Old Reedy Creek Road is next in line for paving and 'No Parking') and a few legislators to convene all the city and state agencies that share responsibility for this urban park problem.

"I know it's not an easy decision," Messerly said. "It may be difficult and expensive. But they need to do the hard thing, and find some place for people to park."