City Hall
My Humorless, Hectoring Response to Joel Connelly
Joel Connelly, writing about parking rate increases over at the PI (funny how no one ever mentions the 11 neighborhoods where parking prices are going down), calls my coverage
of the story "humorless and hectoring
."
Well, duh---the C is for crank.
But he does take a stab at an actual point: With parking rates going up in four neighborhoods, and being extended to 8 pm in several more, Connelly argues that people will drive to Ballard or Bellevue instead of coming into the city.
The city, for context, recently decided to raise parking rates as high as $4 in four neighborhoods, to reduce rates in 11 more, and to keep them the same in seven others. At the same time, they extended paid parking hours from 6pm to 8pm in nine neighborhoods, including three of the four neighborhoods where rates went up. The goal is to have one to two spaces available per block---reducing time spent searching for parking, lowering emissions, and reducing traffic congestion.
Honing in on the new later paid parking hours, Connelly frets that they'll "cut [the] legs out from under" the restaurant business.
How? By adding, according to Connelly's calculation, "$7 to $8 to the cost of dinner or beers with friends."
That math only works, of course, if you assume dinner or drinks start at or before 6:00 and last until 8:00 or later (the only scenario that involves paying for the full two hours). It also assumes everybody drives to dinner or beers alone. (Is Connelly saying people should drive after drinking for two hours?) And it only applies in the downtown commercial core, the only neighborhood in the city where rates are both going up to $4 and being extended. In most neighborhoods with later parking hours, the increase would be much less.
Connelly may consider it "authoritarian," as he puts it, to charge higher rates for parking in a few areas, but the fact is that these rates were based on data (from that macho, chest-thumping, thuggish blowhard, Douglas Shoup), not heartfelt testimonials or online editorials.
You don't base transportation policy on fear-mongering, but fact-free, statements like Connelly's "Higher costs and disruption could trigger the business equivalent of a 'perfect storm,' damaging both people's livelihoods and the city's recovery from the Great Recession."
Moreover, we have a transportation policy in this city aimed at reducing emissions and giving people reasons not to drive alone. If that policy is authoritarian, then so is policy dictating that gas taxes go to roads, policy saying you can't speed in a school zone, policy saying you can't run red lights, or any other policy government establishes.
Finally: Please. Seattle isn't going to start "going dark after hours" and lose its "nighttime vitality" (which Connelly describes redundantly as "vital") because it starts charging for evening parking. This may surprise Joel, but 6pm isn't actually "after hours." People aren't going to clubs while it's still light out. And there's a reason the hardest time to get a table at most restaurants is 8pm.
If the new hours actually harm the restaurant business, then the city should roll them back---but they shouldn't base policy on the dire Chicken Little warnings that emerge every time taxes or fees go up.
Well, duh---the C is for crank.
But he does take a stab at an actual point: With parking rates going up in four neighborhoods, and being extended to 8 pm in several more, Connelly argues that people will drive to Ballard or Bellevue instead of coming into the city.
The city, for context, recently decided to raise parking rates as high as $4 in four neighborhoods, to reduce rates in 11 more, and to keep them the same in seven others. At the same time, they extended paid parking hours from 6pm to 8pm in nine neighborhoods, including three of the four neighborhoods where rates went up. The goal is to have one to two spaces available per block---reducing time spent searching for parking, lowering emissions, and reducing traffic congestion.
Honing in on the new later paid parking hours, Connelly frets that they'll "cut [the] legs out from under" the restaurant business.
How? By adding, according to Connelly's calculation, "$7 to $8 to the cost of dinner or beers with friends."
That math only works, of course, if you assume dinner or drinks start at or before 6:00 and last until 8:00 or later (the only scenario that involves paying for the full two hours). It also assumes everybody drives to dinner or beers alone. (Is Connelly saying people should drive after drinking for two hours?) And it only applies in the downtown commercial core, the only neighborhood in the city where rates are both going up to $4 and being extended. In most neighborhoods with later parking hours, the increase would be much less.
Connelly may consider it "authoritarian," as he puts it, to charge higher rates for parking in a few areas, but the fact is that these rates were based on data (from that macho, chest-thumping, thuggish blowhard, Douglas Shoup), not heartfelt testimonials or online editorials.
You don't base transportation policy on fear-mongering, but fact-free, statements like Connelly's "Higher costs and disruption could trigger the business equivalent of a 'perfect storm,' damaging both people's livelihoods and the city's recovery from the Great Recession."
Moreover, we have a transportation policy in this city aimed at reducing emissions and giving people reasons not to drive alone. If that policy is authoritarian, then so is policy dictating that gas taxes go to roads, policy saying you can't speed in a school zone, policy saying you can't run red lights, or any other policy government establishes.
Finally: Please. Seattle isn't going to start "going dark after hours" and lose its "nighttime vitality" (which Connelly describes redundantly as "vital") because it starts charging for evening parking. This may surprise Joel, but 6pm isn't actually "after hours." People aren't going to clubs while it's still light out. And there's a reason the hardest time to get a table at most restaurants is 8pm.
If the new hours actually harm the restaurant business, then the city should roll them back---but they shouldn't base policy on the dire Chicken Little warnings that emerge every time taxes or fees go up.
