When did parking become such a problem?

When did parking become such an issue in La Crosse? Issues involving where people park their cars have continued to arise in recent years. La Crosse has built parking ramp after parking ramp. So have other entities, including Gunderson Health System, UW-La Crosse, and WTC. Those ramps have all gone up in just the last few years, and a number of them, at UWL, and the Riverside Center ramp downtown, are already having more levels added to the ramps. There are plans for yet another ramp, across from the jail. The city has hired a parking utility coordinator, all to try to sort out issues with how much to charge, and when, and how to keep people from vandalizing the parking gates. All of these issues have come to light in just the past few years. Which makes us wonder, what did we do before we built all these ramps? Where did we park? I don’t remember it being such a problem. Yet even as we build hundreds and hundreds of new parking spaces, still people think La Crosse has a parking problem, so we continue to build and build. But the city of La Crosse’s population hasn’t grown much at all as all these ramps are being built. Have we become more picky about where we park? Are there more cars on the road, or more cars heading downtown? La Crosse used to regulate parking with parking meters throughout the downtown. Maybe we need to put those back in place, returning to a time when where to park wasn’t really an issue.