Nothing makes people crazy like taking away their god-given right to free parking:
Their argument was a simple one: Consumers, without convenient, free one-hour parking on N 34th, would pass up PCC and do their grocery shopping somewhere else. Never mind that PCC provides more than 80 free 90-minute parking spots immediately beneath its Fremont location. [emphasis added]
So to recap, parking regulations in Seattle apparently work like this:
- Developer proposes new retail development
- Neighborhood residents, scared about losing free street parking, demand tons of below-ground parking
- Building is built with tons of below-ground parking, adding significant development costs, which are passed on to business and residents in the form of higher rents
- Shoppers, many of whom are the neighborhood residents mentioned in step 2, don’t use below-ground parking because it’s inconvenient
- Street parking fills up, because there’s this new retail establishment and all this free parking in front of it!
- City proposes installing meters, to manage the parking so that shoppers don’t have to circle endlessly looking for spots
- Some residents (and shoppers, and business owners) demand that the parking remain free
- Parking gets so bad that people start shopping elsewhere
- Developer proposes new retail development…
Crazy. Of the hundreds of times I’ve shopped at that PCC, only once have I parked out front. The free spots are absolutely always taken. Not that I care, the underground lot is usually half empty. Oh, and it’s not just for PCC – retail for that whole block is allowed to park there.
It’s ridiculous, whenever anyone proposes any kind of development, all people care about is parking. Near my house there’s a proposal for a development with 8 live work units, that doesn’t include parking. The city did a study that showed that even at peak parking times, there were plenty of spaces left on the street next to it. However, the neighborhood is in an uproar, sending letters and organizing meetings. Deal with it!
Yeah. I hope that at least some of the people who will move in there won’t have cars, but even if they do, a study showed (and I’ve seen) plenty of parking on that block.
And yet…charging for parking is one of the few ways to control and discourage automobile traffic in the city. The cost of gas doesn’t matter because the distances are so short, and you can’t toll major arterials because people will just drive on the side streets.
Hey, I bet that’s the ones on 65th near Third Place Books Ravenna, right?
Unfortunately it seems like most people in that area do drive everywhere–even just a few blocks to the grocery store. We used to live just south of there and would rarely see anyone else walking. This was a huge contrast to the middle of the U-District where we were before. The distances weren’t any farther, I think it’s a culture.