One of the issues debated at last night’s 37th LD Dems meeting was a resolution supporting Mayor Mike McGinn’s decision to suspend the city’s ban on all-day parking lots near Link Light Rail stations. Only it wasn’t really debated, per se… more like passed unanimously without much discussion, let alone dissent
I was kinda surprised, as one of the purposes of the ban is to prevent the neighborhoods surrounding the stations from becoming destinations for park and riders. The purpose of light rail, after all, is more to get people out of their cars than it is to save folks a few bucks on downtown parking, and paving the surrounding properties over with parking lots does little to serve the local community.
But while I agree with the intentions of the ban, there’s something to be said for being flexible, and with many development projects on hold due to the bad economy, and local businesses struggling to make ends meet, a temporary lift of the ban only makes sense. As Martin Duke aptly explains at Seattle Transit Blog:
The reason to oppose park and rides is that they cost a lot of public money ($40k a space in some cases) for not a lot of riders, and because they take up valuable space that could be used for more vibrant development. In some cases, people who park might otherwise have walked, taken the bus, or biked to the station.
Here we have private lots that aren’t costing a dime of tax money, and are in fact generating parking tax revenue; an abundance of empty gravel pits around all Rainier Valley stations, so that there’s no shortage of TOD locations; and of course, a small parking fee to limit users to those who have really bad bus transfers, live too far to walk, and are strongly disinclined to bike. It’s a perfect situation.
In fact, anything that gets more people using light rail short term will be good for light rail long term. Just as long as we don’t turn the Rainier Valley into a permanent desert of park and ride lots.
Nothing wrong with some paid commuter parking in existing lots. What you will find is that those commuters will be willing to shop/eat in the neighborhood before dashing home in their cars.
Fees, taxes, and zoning can be used to limit the spread of new parking lots and encourage TOD on existing lots. Maybe they can find ways to encourage car pooling to these areas.
Bottom line .. Goldy can walk and ride, I wanna park and ride.
The stupidity of this ban arises from too many ideas about WHAT the light rail is,
If it is intended to be transportation from/to SEATAC, then parking lots are necessity including parking IN SEATTLE, The idea that folks are gonna take a bus from Laurelhurst to Husky Stadium or from QA to Broadway, shlepping their luggage is nuts.
If LR is intended to enhance shopping in downtown, then parking is a big need … not in Seattle but in feeder areas ,,, eventually including the eastside and Ngate.
I am skeptical that LR without parking will work in Seattle itself in the near future. Getting from Cap Hill to SLU by light rail is a fantasy only the half assed “planner” we met at DL could believe in. Same for the Lake City/ View Point corridor. If you want to get those folks to use the University station to get into and out of downtown, they will need parking.
The only realistic route that does not need much parking is the one Goldy lives on. Rainer is going to GROW and if we are smart, that growth will be along the rail corridor.
Transport wi/in Seattle is another matter.
Someone’s eventually going to make a bundle on this.
Not from parking fees. This is going to take some acreage off the market for a while in places where there’s going to be “urban village” growth, planned or otherwise. Sooner or later, automobiles are going to become extinct. Even before then, costs and environmental constraints pushing in one direction, versus the forces trying to wring the last pennies of profit out of a dying industry, will cause cars to continue to shrink. Don’t believe me? Look at how Suburbans are giving way to “crossovers”, and check out the size of this year’s Cadillacs….and lookit all those cute little Minis. Eventually what constitutes a “car” may become, as Joe Bageant puts it, “something you strap to your butt with a rubber band”.
As this plays out, the parking requirement is going to go away, and there’ll be plenty of profit to be had from tearing up the asphalt and building something on that land.
In the meantime, “park and ride” might not match everyone’s perfect vision of transportation, but to get people to drive a mile or so to a station beats the crap out of all of them driving miles and miles to downtown.
As an elderly rabbit with weak joints who uses a cane to move about I won’t ride light rail if I have to hop more than 100 feet to get aboard, because that’s as far as I can hop these days.
Anyone who thinks mass transit will work if riders can’t access it has rocks in his head.
No parking, no riders.
Also, the cost of downtown parking is not a small expense for workers earning less than $100,000 a year. And unlike the Wall Street tycoons who pay $250,000 for a parking space or $15 million for a private helicopter, wage earners can’t deduct parking fees as a “business expense,” so it comes out of after-tax income, which makes it 50% more expensive than its nominal cost because you have to earn $300 to pay $200 for parking. Of course, if cubicle slaves have to pay for parking at the outlying end of mass transit, that wipes out any savings from using mass transit and they might as well drive to work and pay for downtown parking.
I’m sure glad I don’t have to deal with any of this shit anymore. After I retired, I was amazed how much of my income had been spent on just getting to work, and other work expenses. I don’t know why the hell anyone bothers to work. You’re better off on the dole.
@4 With all due respect, Roger…you and SJ aren’t the issue. In fact, I probably don’t count because I’m going to be leaving the full-time work force in not too many years.
The the bull’s eye we have to hit is the millions and millions of people who drive dozens of miles (or more) to and from work, and then go to the gym during lunch and play raquetball for an hour, or go home and spend their weekends biking the Burke-Gilman trail or hiking all over the Cascades–then jump back into their gas buggies on Monday and do it all over again. The ones who are in their twenties and thirties and early forties who, left to their own devices, will keep on doing the same for decades to come. Long after we geezoids have shuffled off this mortal coil. They’re the bulk of the problem.
Funny how Cheap Labor Conservatives constantly bombard us with rhetoric about the necessity of cutting taxes for tycoons and businesses so they’ll have “incentive” to create jobs, but don’t give a rap about whether workers have any incentive to hold those jobs. Anyone who works under the system they’ve created is nuts.
You have to pay for your own education and training, all the expenses of looking for work, the numerous nondeductible expenses of holding a job, and now you’re expected to pay for your own health and retirement benefits, and the government taxes away so much of your wages, that you’re probably losing money by working.
No one expects capitalists to invest in money-losing investments. Yet workers are expected to shell out more than they’re paid for the privilege of working. That’s crazy.
Well, I’m not nuts, and I don’t work. Instead, I get tax breaks for sitting here on my fat rabbit ass flipping stocks all day, which contributes zilch to the economy. Too bad; I’m an incentive-driven rabbit, and there’s no incentive in this country to work or be productive, so I’m through with all that. It’s someone else’s turn to be a sap.
@7 You’ve described no problem there that can’t be solved by $250-a-barrel oil and $8-a-gallon gas. I like that solution, because I already own shares of British Petroleum, and I’m thinking about adding Chevron to my stable.
In any case, we’re looking at permanent mass underemployment, so I think there’s going to be a lot less commuting and recreational driving in the future.
http://www.businessweek.com/ma.....935448.htm
Massive Earthquake Destroys Haiti
News media are reporting a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti a few minutes ago. Relief workers on the scene reported seeing “thousands of dead” before phone communications failed.
@6
Actually I’m not doing too bad on that front. A bus pass and a bad habit of eating out for lunch are my only real direct work-related expenses.
@3
Exactly.
Seattle and transit is an absolute joke. Voters wanted relief from freeway congestion; instead they got a rail line through the poor part of town. It was a social engineering project, not a rapid transit project.
But wait, though they bait and switched us all, now that the rail line is up and running and somebody actually wants to use it, they want to block this.
their logic; (and goldy’s)…social engineering…
wouldn’t it be sweet if instead of the wasted money on this current line, they had bought x acres of park and ride in Federal Way, Tukwila, South Seattle, and then run a single “real rail” line into downtown. Then federal way commuters, others in the south end…could drive from their existing homes, park, and use RAPID transit.
Instead, they get zip; they still have to drive into seattle (or take a bus, which hardly required the new separate transit agency and billions wasted.
But wait…the legacy of Ron Sims and cronies continues…they had a nice rail line running from Renton to Woodinville; rather than spend $100mm on some parking lots and some new trains (NOTE: they already owned the rail line)…they will turn it into a hiking trail.
OK, i guess its ok to drive my SUV from Kent to Woodinville, and then feel good about some hikers (when instead a responsible set of public officials would have put together a real RAPID transit system.
Oh yeah, their goal is to social engineer me into a condo in some urban core. NOTE; i already have a sprawling house in S. King County…the damage is done…you cannot force me back into a condo and then turn the house back into forest! Hello!!…
Of course, critical thinking is lost on these guys (and most of you). The notion that you could spend wisely on transit means nothing to those who want to gentrify the low income part of town, (oh by the way, can’t wait to hear about the first tourist who gets mugged going from Sea Tac thru rainier valley to get to their hotel downtown).
yipes.
@ 13
“wouldn’t it be sweet if instead of the wasted money on this current line, they had bought x acres of park and ride in Federal Way, Tukwila, South Seattle, and then run a single “real rail” line into downtown.”
– wow, an anti-social engineering dude who wants the goverment to spend tons of money for prime private-sector real estate, and who wants it to use emminent domain for a “real rail” line through a dense urban area.
Pretty big government for the prevention of social engineering.
this is the insanity of the uber-environmentalist nutso stance:
We can’t make it easy to help car riders use light rail because we really really really just want to see people give up their cars & walk 20 miles to the light rail stop.
MGinn & his Sierra Club nut cases want to return Seattle to the glory of the 1840’s! Damn that devils wagon!