Feature-Length Parking

“Parasite” runs two hours and 12 minutes.

If you wanted to see the Oscar-winning film, if a matinée happened to be playing at the East Hampton Cinema this weekend, and if you happened to secure a parking spot in the Reutershan lot, you’d still be out of luck.

The time limit there is two hours.

Many have complained that time limits on parking in East Hampton Village are downright inhospitable, making it difficult not only to see a movie but also to have a meal and maybe do some shopping — which, presumably, everyone would like visitors to do. Village officials have countered that it is the storekeepers who asked for the two-hour limit, wanting to save parking spots for paying customers that employees were hogging for themselves. Village officials might also counter that longer-term parking is available off Lumber Lane to visitors and employees alike.

The truth is that few people visiting the village are going to want to walk the not tremendously pedestrian friendly route from Lumber Lane to the commercial district — not when there’s a perfectly good parking lot in the middle of the village. The truth is that, even with the time limits at the Reutershan lot, employees still seem to be circumventing them — stepping away from work periodically to do the “two-hour shuffle,” moving their cars from one spot to another so as not to get ticketed, which means they’re still taking up coveted parking spaces.

So it was refreshing this week to hear the East Hampton Village Board discuss the idea of extending to three hours the time limit for at least some of the spaces in the Reutershan lot. Other, at-first-glance-promising ideas were bounced around briefly as well — such as leasing out spots in the underused Osborne Lane lot to merchants for their employees, or even reviving a shuttle that would transport people from the Lumber Lane lot to the commercial core.

For now, simply dialing up the length of time cars can remain in the Reutershan lot, which seems to be the most popular place to park, seems a reasonable first step. This, the middle of winter, seems as good a time as any to see if that change works out.