Hey West Seattle, Quit Your Bitchin’!
 A Seattle Times article today discussed the City’s proposal to install parking pay stations at the West Seattle Junction. Businesses and residents are up in arms – how could they!! Especially after the neighborhood fought hard to remove meters a decade ago. Businesses argue that making people pay for parking is bad for business. I don’t see this being a relevant arguement  in the bustling commercial districts of West Seattle-people who want to drive will pay for parking. Residents complain of parking spillover onto residential streets. This can be solved with RPZs and enforcement. If our goal as a City is to reduce VMT, one effective way to do this is to eliminate all free parking. Sightline Institute provides a good overview of this fact. Parking shouldn’t be free – West Seattle, you need to get with the program.
One idea that has been floated by the good folks over at Seattle Great City Initiative is to create targeted streetscape improvement funds using the revenue from parking paystations (I’m not sure what the status of this is). Each neighborhood business district with parking paystations would receive the revenue generated from the paystations (after operating and enforcement costs are subtracted) and could use it to make streetscape improvements such as pavement repair/enhancment, street furniture, public art, and other amenities. I wonder if there would be as much bitching about making people pay for parking if such a mechanism were put in place…