Downtown Seattle has around 79,574 parking stalls, with an average occupancy rate of 65%, which means we have at least 54,500 cars parked in lots downtown. Traffic flow downtown is around 96,400 cars per day. If we assume that 90% of these cars drive in and out of the city every day, that means that 96% of car traffic in the city can disappear if we remove the parking lots.
You might call this idea insane. How will people go to work, or the movies, or go shopping? That’s where the idea gets interesting. You probably recall that we’re almost done building a light rail line through the city to the south, and we’ll soon continue it northward. What if we built a giant parking structure south of the city, and another one north of the city, and located them both right at our new light rail line?
For every new stall we build, let’s remove one from downtown. This will free up room downtown for more retail, more businesses, and more residential units. As traffic declines we can add streetcars and make some areas pedestrian-only areas. The freeway will clear up as fewer cars queue up at exit ramps on I-5.
We’ll keep some cars around – they’re great for delivering goods to businesses, or if you need to get through downtown to somewhere else less accessible by rail/bus. But our downtown is very walkable, so it’s a shame we’ve given up so much to cars.
Matt, while your idea has merit, I think some less radical solutions would pay big dividends (and be more palatable to downtown retailers).
For example, a surprising large portion of traffic is attributable to people looking for on-street parking. I’ve seen estimates in the 20 to 40 percent range. The reason is simple: on-street parking is much cheaper than private lots.
If we charged market rates for on street parking (ie made it our objective through higher prices to fill only 85-90 percent of spots on a given block during peak periods), we could eliminate over 25 percent of downtown traffic.
And the thing is retailers would win, because it would actually be easier to drive downtown, and to find closer parking. Sure it would cost more, but most people are paying the price of private lots already (which, by the way, would actually come down in price a bit). And everyone, currently, is paying the price of traffic congestion due to inefficiently priced on-street parking.
What might work is to map out the parking lots, and then eliminate on-street parking in the blocks that have lots. As suggested above, use market-pricing on the remaining metered parking.
Considering the amount of off-street parking built in Seattle over the years, it seems hard to justify keeping on-street parking now.
On-street parking can calm traffic and provide a buffer between the road and the sidewalk for pedestrians. Off-street parking, i.e. parking garages or lots, are a waste of urban space. It doesn’t make sense to “prefer” off-street parking.
You know what else can calm the traffic and provide a buffer? Wider sidewalks, bulbouts, delivery and load-unload only zones, bicycle lanes, and trolley tracks.
Nobody wants more offstreet parking, but Seattle has a lot already. Nor do any of us wish to see streets turned into six-lane raceways through town.
But those parking lanes are pretty pricey real estate. And making it easier to park with market pricing doesn’t do much to discourage downtown car use.
Maybe at the end of the process there’s some logical mix, but I’m more inclined to think that some streets should just be bikes, pedestrians, and streetcars, and others should have the parking removed to handle the shift in traffic.
It won’t be that long before we’re done with the car, anyway.
Matt,
Had a hard time following the numbers/logic with your percentages. The issue surrounding the ST purchase of the Post Office parking structure in the SODO seems to be a microcosm of what you’re suggesting as NonAutotopia.
As a burbite I’ve always had a hard time understanding the city logic of paving a four lane road and using half of it for free, or at least well below market rate parking (e.g. 10th/Broadway on Capitol Hill).
I thought Seattle was on the right track years ago with Westlake Center but after paying big bucks to convert that to pedestrian use they caved to retail interests and reopened the street. Obviously I don’t get it :-/
Since the bus tunnel is open again I occasionally will come downtown (hey, it’s better than Bellevue Square). When it gets taken over by trains that go nowhere near where I live then I’ll most likely revert back to staying away. If there was better transit all those hooligans from the eastside would be infesting Seattle even more than they do today. So hey, keep them streets clogged and what ever you do don’t improve transit!
PS. What’s with this promise of 20+ hours of LINK service. Right now they close the bus tunnel at 7PM and force people to go over and find the bus home on some dark ally (I think it’s called 4th Avenue?).
Catowner wrote:
“And making it easier to park with market pricing doesn’t do much to discourage downtown car use.”
No, it’s exactly the opposite.
Right now, too many cars are chasing too few spots. Increasing the price will reduce demand to equal supply, and hence downtown car use will fall. And the amount of traffic downtown will far even more because would-be parkers won’t have to circle the block searching for an open space.
I agree w/ chrisb – doubling or tripling the “meter” rate on the street should reduce the number of folks motoring around looking for a space near their destination since those spots will be about the same price as in a lor or garage.
Running the meters until 9:00PM seven days a week would certainly help as well; there is a lot of slow cruising and idling at 5:55 PM almost every day downtown.
Aren’t meter rates the same everywhere? That doesn’t seem right. I’m guessing that it wouldn’t be a quantum leap to adjust rates based on demand. There should always be a few spots open. I’t would be interesting to know what that is. It might end up being higher than the lots downtown since there is a minimum of what $5 in most lots? The rate change eliminate the meter feeders and turn the street parking into short term parking which seems like a much better use.
I read somewhere that the lots are only 65% full. I don’t know how they calculate that or if it’s accurate. Not even sure how wide an area they were looking at. Still, I think the idea is that with market pricing there will always be a place to park.
I would think the challenge with dynamic metering is that you’d want to know the price before you leave your house, not once you pull into the spot and walk over to the meter, right?
Of course, in the not-too-distant future our cell phones and computers will provide us with this sort of real-time transit information.
I wasn’t suggesting variable meter rates like HOT lanes but just different fixed rates for different parts of town. The downtown core would be the most expensive. It might be a shock for some the first time they put a quarter in the meter but it would pretty quickly get them to move to a garage rather than feed the meter all day.
In a way we do have dynamic metering in that after a certain time and on certain days the meters are free. Those times might also need to be adjusted based on the area of town. I do like the system I’ve seen where there’s pay stations and you use a window tag much better than the traditional meter but in areas where you want to encourage relatively quick turnover the old style meter would be best.
Aha, I see. That makes more sense.
The pay stations are going to be the way of things in the future, though. Especially if parking gets so expensive. There are only so many quarters one can have on hand in one’s car. I use the pay stations exclusively, even if I’m only parking for 20 minutes. They’re so much more convenient.
It might be worth combining this market-pricing idea with a parking tax for off-street parking. A bunch of other cities use (SF, Chicago) use revenue from a parking tax for transit, though here in justify-taxes-as-user-fees land, it might be better to dedicate it to street repair (which we also need, and which could in turn free up general-fund street repair money for uses like schools and transit).