BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I suspect that the South Side Works, as a retail outlet, isn't panning out as the developers have planned. Yeah, a few big box businesses are doing well, but there seems to be a lot of turnover in the smaller shops.

Additionally, plenty of other business districts (see: Shadyside) do just fine without free parking.

yeah, maybe people aren't coming out because an Italian gift shop isn't on the top of anyone's list now...or ever.

Except I am afraid they will do exactly what you suggest, move their shop somewhere else for cheaper rent. Somewhere else being another strip mall in the burbs.

I'm not defending the parking increase, I think it is a great idea, but I think it has come at an awkward time. If paired with an increase in cycling infrastructure, it could make a persuasive argument. However, following transit cuts, I know lots of people who are feeling the pinch and just want to go else where.

I wonder what it would take to get people to advertise 'Bike parking still free' or something to that effect in their windows. It may seem overly obvious to us, but sometimes you need to advertise the alternatives a bit more.

SSW has been struggling since its inception, I don't free parking won't fix anything. If you're not willing to pay $3 to park in a garage, then you're probably not going to spend $75 on a "fine Italian gift." If that letter was from REI I would be concerned.

I hate paying $3 to a garage when I just need to go somewhere for 15 minutes. So, I HATE driving to Southside Works for specific short errands where a meter would suit my needs better. However, biking there is pretty great. There are plenty of places to lock close to the handful of shops I frequent. Bicycle parking FTW!

I hate paying $3 to a garage when I just need to go somewhere for 15 minutes.

Exactly why the rates have gone up and the meters are enforced until 10pm.

I just spent two weeks in san francisco, where every business was in a race to be the next one to COMPLETELY NIX their parking spaces in front of their stores and replace them with parklettes: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/19/3710989/san-franciscos-tiny-plazas-convert.html

In the mission especially, a huge number of businesses wanted in on the no-more-parking-spot trend, iin favor of awesome public seating, gardens etc.

Anyway, it is exactly what Parking Day is about... but going full time. They call them 'temporary structures' on the city books, but I doubt they will ever go away. Woudlnt it be wonderful?

Also there is a great book reccomended, I think, by Lolly called the Real Cost of Free Parking, and several other studies that suggest all on street parking be $$$ and all off street, tucked away parking be free... that way our streets wont be as filled with "car storage" etc. I could talk about this forever, but, there ya go, letter writer.

^ I love this! Wish they posted more photos.

If I need to drive to SSW I just park in a side-street across Carson. Always space available and all you have to do is walk an extra block.

I love SF. NYC has a similar program but have been reluctant to give out permits.

OTB also wants to remove the parking spot in front of their door and replace it with bike parking in the summer.

It's cool stuff.

If your primary audience is one who drives, perhaps SSW isn't the right location for you in the first place.

Ahlir, but if my customer can't park directly in front of my business they won't come!

It amazes me that the average American has been so well trained to literally be unable to see that often they are walking further across a mall parking lot than they would be in a traditional business district, and to be so lazy that they think they shouldn't have to walk one damn step more than they absolutely have to.

@cdavey - I think about this in the grocery store sometimes or other big box stores. Sometimes the walking just IN the store is more than I would walk to get my food in the strip district or a less mega store.

stores and parking lots should just have segways ready for all customers. THEN i will come to them!

rascal scooters and people movers (with chairs!). segways require too much effort.

I am taking an evening course at Pitt this summer, and you should hear my classmates complain about parking meter enforcement in Oakland! It's especially amusing because as Pitt students, we all get to ride the bus for free.

Pitt is another example how free parking is bad for business. Pitt students drive to school and take up a meter spot that someone could have used to spend their money when they could take the bus for free! FREE! I was so desperate in college I created a fake Pitt ID so I could get to school downtown.

The other people who occupy prime parking spaces are store employees.

For a while last year I worked in Robinson Township. Sometimes I would stop in Target on my way into work, and there would be quite a few cars occupying all the closest spaces. I would think, "Gee, that's funny. The store opened up only five minutes ago, and look how many customers are here already."

Duh! Those were the employees' cars. I would go inside and find the employees in their morning team huddle, or whatever it's called, and I was the only customer in the whole place.

when I worked at a mall we had to park in the farthest spots.... (we also had to walk uphill in the snow both ways).

^that. The smart small business owners I know insist that their employees do NOT park in the prime spaces all day because, dammit, those are for our customers.

Of course, metering the prime spaces would solve that problem. Oh, but right - we don't like nanny-state socialized metered parking, we want our free-market free-parking.

This link provided to you courtesy of the Savannah Bicycle Coalition:

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/free-parking-is-for-socialists/Content?oid=4049331

There's also this little thing called 'advertising.' If you don't do it, people probably don't know about your store and therefore won't come to visit.

That's why all those little non-developer developed piazzas like in actual Rome suck so bad - no free parking. Look how sucky that is:



Oh, and also I forgot, no Shitcake Factory.

shitcake factory lol

Also there is a great book reccomended, I think, by Lolly called the Real Cost of Free Parking, and several other studies that suggest all on street parking be $$$ and all off street, tucked away parking be free... that way our streets wont be as filled with "car storage" etc. I could talk about this forever, but, there ya go, letter writer.

Might be different from Lolly's book, but I enjoyed reading Donald Shoup's "The High Cost of Free Parking" (http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Donald-Shoup/dp/1884829988) when it first came out. (Now out in paperback!) One of his big bugaboos is the employees parking right in front of the storefront all day, rather than a series of paying customers. He's a big believer in performance-based pricing for parking, titrated to achieve 85% occupancy, or one out of eight spaces (one per block) free to avoid "cruising" for parking, increasing traffic congestion. He says this could mean free or very nominal parking in the middle of the night, for instance.

He also really hates vast oceans of suburban mall parking lots, or large off-street parking lots anywhere, which disrupt the urban fabric, making it more spaced out and less walkable, which encourages driving everywhere, which encourages more parking lots...

It's a heck of a read.

Quite the vicious cycle.

@ieverhart, that was the one!

hm, as far as more pics of the parkletts..

there are a bunch on this page, scroll down:

http://sfpavementtoparks.sfplanning.org/

The real free-market solution would be to enable private sales of on-street parking. So someone could buy up a bunch of on-street parking in the morning and sublet it all day long.

I sat upstairs at Oishii Bento one day for lunch, watching a guy argue with a meter-maid for a good 30 minutes. Hand waving, pointing, exaggerated facial expressions, etc. It was an Oishii employee, his SUV was ticketed right in front of Oishii. We all were speculating about what they were arguing about, and my coworker suggested that despite him going out there every hour plugging more quarters in the meter, they can still give you a ticket because it is "1 hour" parking. Chalk the tire and you can still ticket even if the meter is fed. I've seen the same SUV parked there almost everyday since. I've seen a barista at the Crazy Mocha in Oakland go out and plug the meter in front of the coffee shop. I suspect most other small businesses in Oakland are the same. People don't get it (or don't care).

Well if i had my way we wouldn't even have to get out of our cars to shop, we could just plow through storefronts and get what we wanted! Damnit, I'm an American! Oh wait, i don't own a car.....I think moving to this city dropped me back even farther in ever owning a car.Even being 3.5 hours from home...I can take Megabus to Buffalo for 1 dollar..And pay a friend to get me from Buffalo for 20 or something. I laugh at cars! Bah!

But you can leave and return, right? I know some places outside of Pittsburgh say "you can park here for up to 2 hours, once per day" but our 1 hour / 2 hour limited parking doesn't specify that. So what would constitute leaving and returning?

Out of curiosity, I asked a meter-maid one day. She told me they ticket if they find the same car parked anywhere on the same block. There are newer signs in Oakland that say something to that effect. I think they punch your plate into the computer and then punch it in again at a later time and print out a ticket.

In Davis, they have free car parking almost everywhere downtown. Only a few lots/ramps were metered. Otherwise they have 1-3 hour parking limits, and a little E-vehicle that drove around electronically scanning plate numbers. If you're parked on the same block, anytime that day, for more than the time, you get a ticket. Technology++ I never had to search very long for a parking place on the rare occasion I drove. Like most everyone else, still rode my bike 99% of the time, even though parking was free and available (except during special events / farmers market time / Friday evenings / etc)

Transit service to SSW is actually better on Second Avenue than on East Carson, and that's building in the walk time across the HMB. That's not intuitive. There's a belief that if you're standing next to a bus stop, a bus will magically show up there every 15 minutes. Um, nope. You have to know the total travel time from all bus stops within a reasonable walk, and for SSW, that includes 2Av.

"The real free-market solution would be to enable private sales of on-street parking. So someone could buy up a bunch of on-street parking in the morning and sublet it all day long."

That more or less describes what's happening: the City owns the street, and therefore the spaces, and they lease/rent them out all day long via the meters.

While no doubt there are other rules prohibiting what I'm about to suggest...

Then ALMKLM, one could theoretically feed the meters for the entire stretch of a section of Carson, replace the cars with traffic cones four feet from the curb, (or five if one considers how Pgher's parallel park), and create an impromptu protected bike lane?

Alternatively, a business could rent the space in front of their place and put a table there for an spell?

ALMKLM - not quite. There's no free market if you can't resell the thing you've purchased. In theory you could do this now but it would probably result in violence from the left-wing commies who think you shouldn't have the right to use the thing you purchased if they want it.

"There's no free market..."

Exactly.

here is an artcle about the cost of parking in case you dont want to read 773 pages about parking

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.html

The 773 pages are worth it though.

If they ever release a Kindle version I will read it.