Everyone who bought groceries in Cortez over the past weekend undoubtedly noticed the same problem: There was no place to park. The Wal-Mart parking lot was filled as far as the eye could see, and a quick tour of the premises showed dozens of vehicles from Utah. That generates sales tax revenue and local wages.

The City Market parking lot was a different story: It, too, was filled from curb to curb, but most of the vehicles weren’t parked. Instead, they were idling in a line that at times stretched the entire north-south length of the lot, eliminating an entire row of much-needed parking places and making traffic flow a nightmare. City Market employees stood in the cold waving their arms, trying to hustle vehicles into gas bays and make sure the entrances weren’t blocked. The fact that they often were blocked anyway undoubtedly contributed to the crowd at Wal-Mart.

So there residents were, on what must surely be the second- or third-busiest shopping weekend of the year, and they were caught in traffic — in Cortez! We don’t deal with that very well, because we don’t have much practice at it. Not too many years ago, it was possible to pick up milk and bread in five minutes. Now it’s a major production, assuming it’s even possible to turn left anywhere along Main Street.

One could wonder what City Market officials were thinking, launching their gas promotion this weekend. Local filling-station owners tell us that their cost on a gallon of gasoline is considerably more than City Market’s weekend low of $1.29, so it’s a good bet that the grocery chain was losing money on its gasoline sales. With parking spaces inaccessible and the whole lot looking like a bumper-car arena, its doubtful that grocery sales made up for the loss. Maybe the promotion will build customer loyalty.

Beyond that, though, maybe we need to take a good look at the way we drive and park in Cortez. Not too long ago, a survey of downtown parking was commissioned because some people, both merchants and shoppers, had the perception that we had a serious shortage of parking spaces. Others were skeptical — it’s possible to look down Main Street on some winter days and see entire blocks without a car in front of them — and indeed the study showed that sufficient parking existed within reasonable walking distance of the downtown business district.

Why, then, was the perception different? Are we really too lazy to walk a couple blocks? Of course we aren’t; we’ve just never had to, and we’re sometimes guilty of forgetting that a couple blocks between a parking place and a downtown store still isn’t as far as from the northern reaches of the Wal-Mart lot to the front door.

One shopping hitch that’s being mentioned more and more often is the difficulty in crossing Main Street. Those walk lights don’t last very long, and there’s always the danger of someone turning onto Main without noticing a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Don’t even think about trying to cross between the lights during the summer or the Christmas shopping season. Pedestrian risks spread into other parts of town as well. Crossing between Parque de Vida and Centennial Park can be risky business, for example.

Western towns were designed (to the extent that any intentional design was involved in their growth) with the automobile in mind. Population growth is generally equated with economic prosperity, but it also translates into more traffic and the need for more parking. At a certain point, public transportation becomes an issue.