Frustrated over years of complaints, city officials are finally considering banning shopping carts from all retail establishments. So what’s a shopper to do? “Bag it,” said one city councilor. “The number of abandoned shopping carts on our streets and in our neighborhoods are overwhelming. We just need to get rid of them all and start using those cool bags that Harris Teeter has.”
Speaking to a city attorney who preferred to remain anonymous, they informed us that there were numerous options on the table. One option was to enforce a locking mechanism on shopping cart wheels to prevent them from leaving retail parking lots and stores. Another option was to put a tax on every shopping cart. But locks are boring and new taxes are sure to get people excited.
A third option was to investigate the model used at the airport, where users would be required to pay $3.00 per cart each time they needed to use one. Council considered this one heavily, but then didn’t want to get sued by the airport for stealing their shopping cart payment idea. With the current economic conditions, the city is looking past all three options and considering the extreme–banning carts altogether.
image courtesy Dan Hontz, via Flrckr
Some neighbors in the Lineberry Alliance area we spoke too seemed excited about the proposed change. One neighbor on Sierra Drive stated, “Every day I come home from work, there’s a shopping cart sitting across the street in the empty field. It’s an eye sore.”
Another neighbor was outraged. “The city is trying to solve the wrong problem. If they are trying to beautify the city, they should tear down Capital Boulevard, then work on this shopping cart issue. Maybe they could install those big long poles on them and put some advertisements on it for the Lightner Center.”
This of course, is an April Fool’s posting, but ironically, there is probably a lot of truth intertwined.
If shopping cart blight is a problem in your area, please contact your city councilor and ask them to take action.
Tags: abandoned, april fools, blight, carts, Lightner Center, neighborhoods, shopping
Good one Jason! Didn’t know it was a joke until you said so at the end. In Switzerland, you must deposit a coin (worth about 3 bucks) into the lock to release a cart from the one in front of it. When you return the cart to the line, you get your deposit back. That is a lot of incentive to return your cart.