The similarities between cheap street parking and crack cocaine are striking.

It's like there is a Steve Jobs-intensity reality distortion field around Boren and John.

Matt Taibbi's latest "Griftopia" includes a story of Chicago taking the "market rate parking" idea to such an extreme it makes our modest proposal seem especially sane by comparison:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/…

Gosh, how come people can't just take the bus or ride their bikes?

If this was just DT, not a big deal, but its city wide. Go to a Seahawks game? Sunday used to be free, now its going to cost you 20$ to park, even if youre parking 6 blocks away from the stadium.

Then theres the fact that my sister, now has to pay to visit me after work, used to be free after 7pm, not any more. Technically, its slightly cheaper to use the diamond parking lot next to my apt.

Just 'cause you can't afford a car, don't trash those of us that can. I have to drive my daughter to daycare daily, so there.

Raising parking rates amounts to yet another regressive tax. The higher cost of commuting will be disproportionately felt by lower-income people.

You know what'd be great? If some form of revenue generation other than fines and user fees could be found to balance budgets. But what would we call such a thing? Whatever it is, I'm sure it's never been tried before.

I think we need traffic and parking rates based on one's total asset value.

Which means Jeff Bezos owes us a whole mess o' funds.

@7: SEXY CARWASH!

What struck me about Westneat's column was just what a jarring stretch he had to make with his slippery slope argument about Seattle becoming Washington, DC:

Years ago I lived in Washington, D.C., where the running joke was that everything was broken except the parking enforcement.... Notoriously their meter maids had quotas, requiring them to write 90 tickets per day — one every five minutes.

The mood was of a City Hall at war with its citizens.

...Feels like where Seattle's headed, Cindy Jarvis says.

So Danny, are you saying that Seattle government is incompetent like Washington, DC's? Are you saying that Seattle is forcing quotas on its parking enforcement? Way to take a modest policy change and morph it into the onset of some hyperbolic dystopia.

I don't know, while you're at it, why not envision a brave new world where cars are illegal? Sure, it has no bearing on reality, but it might make a good script for a sci-fi movie.

@7, lower-income people don't park downtown. They come in by bus.

@5, so USE THE DIAMOND LOT. This isn't rocket science, and the purpose of city government isn't to give your sister free parking. If you want free parking, go to the mall. That's what it's there for.

i wish seattle had a real good subway system

Typical Cienna post: Skim the column she's about to attack, then misrepresent it to set up the presentation of her predictable, knee-jerk point of view.

So tiresome.

@11, I guess she'll have to, now that parking is cheaper on the Diamond Lot. Wont have much of a choice. Wont really solve the budget problem if parking is cheaper, that is unless Diamond raises its fee's because the city can.

@12, no chance in a subway system, there MIGHT be cost overruns.

@11,

Janitors do drive in. The loss of evening free parking will be a serious hardship for them, which wouldn't be an issue if Seattle's transit system weren't such a joke.

@11: You are mistaken.

Seriously, is this what we have to look forward to? An electorate so opposed to raising taxes for any reason that governments can only bring in revenue by calling it something else? Hey, I have an idea: perfect enforcement of jay-walking laws -- we'll use traffic cameras. $100 fine each offense, mailed to your house. If that doesn't cover the budget deficit, raise the dollar amount till it does.

Scofflaws could be hand-cuffed to a lamp-post until they pay.

@14, huh? What she does with her car is immaterial. The people who DO park in the spaces will be increasing revenue.

@15, so what, we should have special "janitors only" parking stickers or something? TOO BAD.

The way to control access to a scarce resource that everyone wants to get for free is to price it appropriately. For every person who's so upset at paying another dollar or two there will be two or three or five people who are thrilled to pay it and actually get a spot. Cheap parking is not an inalienable right.

Good job on reading a real paper. So sad you failed to pay attention though. Fucking hipsters.

@18, I rather do hope the janitors can receive a special pass:

Janitors who work downtown at night are saying it isn’t feasible for them, either, says Fred Prockiw, an organizer with Local 6 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 4,500 janitors and security guards. In the days following the mayor’s budget speech, Prockiw says, he got calls from night janitors who are also worried about paying for parking until 8 p.m. Most night janitors downtown, he said, start at 5:30.

Many drive, he says, because they live in Burien, Federal Way, SeaTac or Tukwila and public transportation isn’t available or doesn’t work for them. “Many buses don’t run at 2:30 [in the morning] when the majority leave work,” Prockiw says. The rest can’t take transit, he says, because “the bus doesn’t take them all the way or drops them off two to three miles away and they’re walking at night.”
Prockiw says a contingent of janitors plans to pay a visit to the mayor and City Council members to explain they can’t afford to pay more of their wages in parking. Prockiw is hoping some compromise can be worked out — perhaps, he says, a parking pass for those who work downtown at night.

http://www.realchangenews.org/index.php/…

The only solution is to apply the boot to all suburbanites who drive in and overstay their welcome.

And then sell their junkers at auction.

@18 - your last sentence is sort the crux of the argument, something I think small business owners are especially missing. For every customer that has to pay and extra $1 to visit your store, or an extra $3 to finish their hair appointment, there's customers that couldn't find parking and went elsewhere. They're shortsightedly thinking of it as a burden—and perhaps I'm shortsightedly assuming those that choose that burden can afford it—when they should be welcoming the turnover.

And for those than can no longer afford to occupy metered spots for an entire day (I'm guessing small business owners and employees are among the folks doing this, but complaining on behalf of their customers), their car's absence will be doing dozens of people a favor.

Parking downtown is $3.50 here, and weekdays in the Financial District, there's literally no parking without a commercial permit on most streets. Things are running just fine. (blah blah blah I'm all "hey we do it this way in SF", I know, I know...)

I'm cool with it as long as the city doesn't try to make me pay to keep my car on the street in front of my house.

I can't wait to see what the unintended consequences are, though.

Whinging about getting a parking ticket is the sure sign of a pathetic, self-involved asshole. If you are parking illegally, you deserve to get a ticket. Fuck you for giving the parking enforcer a hard time about your own selfish inability to park legally. Decent human beings pay the ticket and move on, and really decent human beings park legally.

Besides, I'm not sure what enforcing laws against illegal behavior has to do with parking fees?

I don't drive to downtown to do some quick shopping especially on Hawk game days because I can never find street parking. If upping the rate frees up some spaces then I'll be downtown a lot more. I'm so tired of South Center

@24 like I said, mostly suburbanites who won't get their cars off the streets and into legal parking lots.

@24: I see raising rates, installing license-plate scans to catch people with unpaid tickets, and putting "boots" on cars with outstanding tickets, as related because the mayor is suggesting all of these measures as part of a comprehensive plan to increase revenue to fill city budget shortfalls. Sienna's post also explicitly links parking fines with parking fees. (In the future, please consider reading items before commenting on them.)

And yes, decent people obey laws. I assume you never jaywalk? Good. In that case you shouldn't have any problem with my plan to make up revenue shortfalls by raising the fines and increasing enforcement of the jaywalking laws already on the books.

@18,

You were the one claiming this doesn't affect the poor. I proved you wrong.

You have to give keshmeshi that.

The employers pass that cost onto their night staff so they can avoid paying state income tax on their misbegotten wealth.

Parking enforcement officials don't even count as a lifeform.

@7 - This isn't a tax. This is parking. When Starbucks raises its prices, that hits the poor disproportionately as well, but I'd sound like an idiot if I called the latte-price increase a "regressive tax," because no one has to buy their coffee at Starbucks.

@20 - These janitors have plenty of options to avoid paying for parking. They won't have the convenience of parking right in front of their workplace without paying, but neither the fuck do I. One example: the #85 "night owl" bus leaves downtown at 2:15am and 3:30am, and runs under the West Seattle Bridge, where there are acres of free parking. Seems to work for their purported schedule, too.

@32 very very few bus services serve very very few jobs in Seattle after 1 am until around 5 am.

I used to catch the earliest bus at the drug-infested Pike-Pine corridor to go to a job at Kent, and nothing has been done to change that, overall.

@33 - Wrong.

I spent fifteen minutes driving around Capitol Hill last Thursday trying to find a spot for Slog happy hour. Finally I went to the pay lot behind Seattle Central. I welcome this rate increase because it will open up spots.