Cambridge is a truly amazing place in so many ways. Don’t you love Cambridge? I do. Since I do not live there, but just pass through so often, perhaps I only see what I want to see, but, I am continually convinced, Cambridge is the model land of the future utopia (yes i say this about Somerville too).

Anyway, this morning, I went to the Cambridge City Hall Annex building to pick up this weeks batch of City Smart packets for delivery. If you are a resident of the North Cambridge neighborhood (they started in the Cambridgeport neighborhood in 2009), you can sign up on their website to receive a bag full of goodies about how to get around the city by walking, biking and public transportation. There are bike maps, water bottles, stickers, information booklets, etc. Resources to help people figure out how to get around with out a car. Neat-o, right?

On my way out, I noticed a table with some cards on it advertising for an art installation upstairs. The public is invited to transcribe excuses from the City’s archive of parking ticket disputes onto the gallery walls. It sounded like fun, but I was on the clock so I just took one of the cards with me.

Interestingly enough, this is an ongoing exhibit (runs through Sept 2.) and part of a larger work by Daniel Peltz the Artist-in-Residence of the Cambridge Department of Traffic and Parking. (wait, the Dept. of Parking has an Artist-in-Residence? apparently so).

Other parts of his work include creating new poetic “non-regulatory” street signage and installing parking boots made of soft stuffed fabric. “The regulations surrounding “soft booting” embrace the ambiguous and sometimes seemingly arbitrary nature of our encounters with parking authority, while aiming to shift their energetic quality.”

I guess getting so excited about an art exhibit sponsored by the Dept of Traffic and Parking is further evidence that I have become a transportation geek (Thanks in part to these guys).  Here’s the link to the exhibition site: http://www.cambridgema.gov/CAC/Exhibitions/Daniel_Peltz.cfm

But truly, I believe that parking is by far the most costly and stressful aspect of owning or operating a motor vehicle in the city. (not to mention how ugly parked cars are). I have talked with other fleet owners who are budgeting $1500/month just for parking tickets (!) and that seems to be the accepted inevitability. Add that to the cost of gas, registration, insurance and maintenance, I’ll bet for the cost of operating a car or a van in the city, you could just buy one of our pedal-trucks every month. :)