parking

at my neighborhood meeting the other night, the issue of parking came up, as it comes up so often. a developer was going to get so many parking spaces for a development, but thought they would need more. the people on the neighborhood board agreed that they would need more.

i have should said something but i stayed quiet, because i feel like i can sound like a broken record sometimes, but if we know anything, we do know that if you build good car infrastructure and lots of parking spaces, people will choose to get around by car. if you build good transit, and biking and walking options, people will use them. we also know that if you make it harder to get some place with one of those transportation modes, people will shift.

unfortunately, for us and for the polar bears, this city almost always chooses to put the resources into car transportation, into streets and parking lots, so many parking spaces, and this has made as thick as concrete the equation that transportation equals only cars.

it doesn't have to, and we don't have to clog up our neighborhood streets with more cars by making more pakring if we limit the parking and build up the alternatives. the polar bears are counting on us doing that. if we are so concrete or asphalt of heart that we won't, they are goners.