Why spend $20 million on a bridge to an inadequate garage?

Maybe it's the sticky, steamy weather, but it sure seems to me that New London's parking woes have grown much worse this summer.

And I don't mean the overcrowding by Electric Boat parkers on the streets around Fort Trumbull and in nearby neighborhoods there.

The city has ignored that problem so long, it's become the status quo.

It's downtown that seems especially overstressed this summer, mostly because of the spike in parking demand caused by the crowded ferries.

There have been days when the Water Street Garage literally has shut down, chock full, turning away even regular customers who pay by the month.

Adding to the problem was the start of the remodeling of the city's surface lots off Eugene O'Neill Drive, a project that will make them look better but ultimately reduce the number of spaces.

The routine closing of the Water Street Garage because of overcrowding is good news if you think that too many people in your city can never be a bad thing. In that sense, it is a good problem.

But it is also worrisome on other levels, especially the plans to connect the overused and inadequate parking garage with a $20 million pedestrian bridge, paid for by state taxpayers, to the proposed National Coast Guard Museum on the waterfront.

What's the point of spending all that money to connect a new ferry terminal and the big museum with no parking of its own to a garage that can't accommodate any more cars?

I know the garage has space the rest of the year, but summer is exactly when demand at the museum and on the ferries would be expected to spike.

So I would add lack of parking to the growing list of reasons the downtown site is inappropriate for the new museum.

Indeed, a lack of summer parking might rival the proposed site's location in a flood zone, isolated from the rest of the city by train tracks, as a good reason not to build it there.

Changing politics seem to be playing a role, too, in putting the $20 million bridge in doubt.

This week, city voters overwhelming gave a thumbs up to a new state representative candidate who is lukewarm about the idea of building the museum on a site the state's chief environmental regulator has called "difficult."

Also, that $20 million bridge promise came from Gov. Dannel Malloy, before the serious budget shredding began. It's not even clear Malloy will still be in office by the time museum officials raise what they need to build a museum and seek to collect on the Malloy pledge.

New London Mayor Michael Passero signaled his intention to address the city's parking morass by appointing a "parking guru" — his term — this spring.

That sounds good, in theory. It did to me, too, until I had a chance recently to chat with the guru about why access was blocked to the surface lot in front of the Water Street garage, even as the garage itself was closed.

Maybe I am just dense but I couldn't make any sense, during our long phone call, about why the lot was closed for so long.

He said new signs would go up explaining it. The signs are up and make no sense, either.

Right through Thursday afternoon, the entrance to the Water Street surface lot, which also accommodates people dropping off and picking up passengers at Union Station, remained barricaded.

Why would you barricade one of the city's remaining parking lots at the same time you are closing down the garage because it is full?

That makes as much sense to me as building a $20 million pedestrian bridge to a parking garage that often cannot accommodate any more cars.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com