Plenty of Parking Spaces When You Charge Too Much

Dear Mr. Burgess,                               October 14, 2010

As a lifelong resident of Seattle who has spent a lot of time abroad and lived 8 years recently in Los Angeles, I have returned to Seattle.

I like a lot of the things that have been done particu larly the waterfront park and the library, but one I find most disturbing is the parking regime crackdown.

I am certain that Joe Diamond and the like love it as I have seen the lots in my neighborhood of lower-Queen Anne double in the past couple years. Unfortunately for the small businesses that don’t have the luxury of free large parking lots such as at University Village, this development does not help.

I notice that you have an 85% goal of parking. Well, if that’s the case if you drive down lower Queen Anne (or bicycle down the street, whatever the people are doing these days) any morning or afternoon you will see about a 8% per block because you treat my neighborhood like it’s the financial district and it’s really a residential neighborhood. So if this is the case, could we go back to the 1 hour free parking. The small businesses are being destroyed because, you know what, people can’t afford to park or move around any more, so they move around less and who gets hit the most? The small businesses, the poorer people who don’t have parking spots but live in apartments with the parking tickets, and the families who will no longer visit the city or the Seattle Center because it is just too expensive to do it with the outrageous parking fees.

I have a small business, I ride a bike, I don’t have a car and you know what, I am against all of these new bike lanes destroying traffic.

For example, drive down Queen Anne Avenue between Mercer and Denny. Be on the passenger side and try to open your door. Guess what, you now have about one foot and almost get your door ripped off by the cars going 30mph because the new bike lane squished the lanes up against the cars to the left creating a massive hazard for anyone getting out of their car. this is happening all over the city and guess what, you are spending lots of money to make things worse and more dangerous. Seriously try opening the door there.

Spending millions on these parking meters which incidentally are the worst UI design I have ever seen (how many thousands of hours are wasted going back and forth from the car, to the sticker, etc…) is helping kill this city.

Think Seattle businesses have it bad now, just wait until the moneyed people don’t come downtown at all anymore to spend. What changed downtown shopping more than anything was the HUD financed/subsidized parking garage that gave cheap/free parking in downtown like in Los Angeles bringing people from the Eastside to the city where it’s cheap and easy.

The current regime and plan of making it unbearably impossible to move around in Seattle will not make it world class, it will just lower the revenues and help the sprawl as the people stay only in their cars in the outskirts.

The plastic wheelchair non-stick things would be a great thing to chop out of the budget on all the intersections. They are slippery in the rain (9 months of the year) and the meshed concrete works fine. I wish I had that government contract.

Best regards,

Travis Winn