Neighborhood parking getting tougher?

The city makes a big deal out of it, but it doesn't seem like they actually enforce zoned parking, so I'm not sure how much it matters. I left my car sitting with no tag in a zoned spot for a week without moving and wasn't ticketed. And today was the first time I'd ever seen a parking enforcement person checking the cars parked in the zoned area by cafe flora. (zone 24? I forget.) Overall, I find it somewhat strange that they seem to be letting builders include fewer parking spots while at the same time making it harder to park on the street. Strange.

Zone 2 near Providence Hospital, --- scheduled to get two permits per household, and the eastern part of Zone 7 near Seattle University, --- scheduled to get one permit per household are also in the CD.

Much of the street parking in these areas is taken by commuters to the two institutions. As part of the Major Institution Master Plan which allows the development of colleges and hospitals in residential neighborhoods the City has rules requiring institutions to seriously limit the number of people who commute in a Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV). The City does not enforce those rules. Although Seattle U. seems to have complied, in the case of the Providence campus Swedish/Sabey has never complied with the rule requiring fewer than 50% to arrive some way other than in an SOV. This is true even though most Swedish employees get free or highly subsidized transit passes. Not sure about the employees of tenants of Sabey.

The City has in place one half of a strategy to limit traffic: The instituion is required to charge enough for on-site parking to take away the incentive of free or relatively cheap parking. But, there's free parking on the streets. The City should work with the institutions to implement strategies that actually get commuters out of the SOV. Maybe some of the $$$ that the institutions spend on building parking garages could be spent on supporting new transit routes. (Metro has a program to provide transit service in partnership with private business.) Microsoft provides very popular buses for its employees from several parts of Seattle.

It was actually in the Seattle P-I. The Times didn't have it.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/373179_park01.h

ssia

If you want more details on SDOT's process and proposed changes to the RPZ policy and the opportunity to comment via an on-line questionnaire see:

http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/parking/rpz_policy_rev

Still love the blog

On our street there are a few residents that have 5+ vehicles on the street. Most of these rarely move and then only wear off the tire chalk from the parking cops. I think it is ok to park on the street where you live but the public street is not the place to store your collection. Here on Union street there is an informal Park-n-Ride as commuters drive here to park free and ride the bus downtown. Permits would help both of these situations.
When I lived in Providence Rhode Island for a while they have a law of no street parking overnight. You had to call the police if you had visitors that needed to park on the street. It was amazing to see the streets completely empty of cars at night. It did mean that every driveway and alot of yards had cars parked in them. That was probably too extreme of a solution but it did make sure all of the cars were actively being used.

Look at 25th Ave between Pike and Union. In the past 3 years or so they have torn down 4 single family houses where 19, YES 19, townhomes now stand. Those townhomes have horrible driveways into tiny garages that most people don't even use. The parking in this area has gotten very congested.

Due to the popularity of Crush, and perhaps the Bottleneck, I am rarely able to park on my block after a certain hour. Since I live at the top of the hill, that means I often have to carry all my groceries or whatever a block or more uphill. I would say the parking around my area sucks.

It certainly is up in Canada. In Toronto, you can't park anywhere for more than 3 hours without getting a permit, and what was once a formality - Toronto parking permits - is indeed getting increasingly tedious to obtain. I've been dealing with this matter more personally, I would encourage anyone whom it may concern to cast an eye or two on this before attempting to park in Toronto. Drop me a line, if you want.

Yours truly,
Julie