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Thursday November 16, 2006
Parking meters
There are areas where parking spaces are a genuine scarcity compared to demand — anywhere near the beach, Downtown, the airport. Then there are places where that status is more dubious — Coral Gables, Sunset Place, downtown Hollywood. I think Midtown falls squarely in the latter category.
It isn’t necessarily even the money — it’s the feeling of being ripped off and made to jump through hoops. Parking in a garage is already a hassle, but making me fuck around with a ticket that needs to get validated and keeping an eye on the clock is a great way to make sure I only to to Target when I really really need to. For the life of me, I don’t see how that’s good for business.
In some areas, there might be a genuine concern that someone will park in one garage and then go somewhere else where the parking is more expensive. But in Wynwood? The only thing around there is galleries. If folks going to the galleries get in the habit of parking for free at Midtown, I’d think that would be a welcome development. I just don’t know what they’re thinking with those rates — it’s like they don’t want to make enough money to cover the expense of having the garage attendant and enforcement, but want to charge enough to be a pain in the ass.
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Charging the public “the taxpayers” was a scheme created by Linda Haskins and Manny Diaz (City of Miami) to benefit a developer from NYC. The out of town developer gets $169 Mil in cash and incentives and the taxpayers have to pay to park… To shop at Target?
“The right to access every building in the city by private motorcar,” Lewis Mumford wrote in 1961, “in an age when everyone owns such a vehicle, is actually the right to destroy the city.”
Paying for parking plays in important role encouraging the use of transit and managing the transportation demand on roadways. In fact, in the urban core of Miami and Miami Beach these two are absolutely critical. Contrast this with Dade’s western half where traffic gets worse paradoxically as roads grow wider and free parking is guaranteed.
I admire the sentiment, madeindade. And there is an idealistic sort of truth to it, though I might add, “try getting to Midtown from the Beach by bus, and tell me it’s a reasonable option, considering it’s FIVE MILES (hint: you need to transfer at least once. I have no idea where).
Omni~ You’re beating it to death a little, but I get the point — we paid for it once, now we’re paying for it again.
If putting politicians in charge of parking is a bad idea why is putting them in charge of mass-transit a good idea?