If you live in one of the new Restrict Parking Zones in Wallingford, your grace period of parking without a permit is over. I spied a parking enforcement officer getting ready to write up my neighbor’s truck on Friday, and when I went out to try to call her off (“wait, I’ll grab them and have them move it”), she said not to worry, it was just a warning, but that they would begin ticketing “for real” on Monday.
That makes her sound real nice about it, which she wasn’t. She seemed pretty grumpy at me for not respecting the fact that the signs have been up for two whole weeks (hey man, I’ve got my sticker, I was just trying to help a neighbor!)
I only mention this to explain 1) why I didn’t call her a “meter maid” (“parking enforcement officer” was definitely the vibe) and 2) as a caveat that she may have been exaggerating about when they’ll start. Several people on Facebook have complained that they would have liked to have seen some tickets on their blocks, but haven’t, despite signs having been up for months. YMMV.
If you haven’t requested your permit yet, got yourself on over to the Seattle Services Portal and click “Permits – Parking & Truck”.
(Photo of HandsomeJimFromMaryland, NOT actual parking enforcement officer.)
Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll continue to make a special exception for the derelict RV’s.
I don’t think it makes sense to the people who the city forces to live with these RV’s parked right outside their home or business. They frequently explode, they leave trash and human waste everywhere, and attract crime. So no, I don’t think we should ticketing someone who parks a few minutes past the 2 or 3 hour limit just to make room for them to park their RV for weeks or months on end.
Ah, no. I think you have me confused with the YIMBYs and bike lane activists.
You mean how I edited it to change it from “confused with other interests groups?”
Yah, you sure got me there.
Please provide my “anti-car” post. I’ll wait.
1. Being anti-tweaker RV parking doesn’t make me anti-car. I don’t care if people choose to drive SUV’s and pickups, that’s their business. I’m not going to chastise them and wag my finger in their face the way many of these bike lane zealots do. What I do care about are rolling meth labs that are likely not even street legal and with no insurance parking wherever they please.
2. As for my bike lanes on I-5 comments, If you can’t tell the difference between an anti-car ideology and obvious sarcasm, then I can’t help you.
LOL dude, you are hopeless. Moving on now.
Well I am anti-tweaker van– including the huge newly parked trailer van thing parked next to old Zaw’s in solidarity with the 4 broken down old carrs parked there
Uncle Matt is an A-Class troll. The chasms between his stands from one thread to the next could rival the Grand Canyon. Ignore.
uncle matt is out of work today an dwants to participate. Let him rip! He has the highest comments made in less than 2/3 of the month than any othe rposte rin the world of Wallyhood!! Now onto other activities.( c re c)
seriously?? You joked with her that I put ( c re c) on here after 4 years of her unrelentless snippy mean -spirited remarks? Do you think it is funny to deliberately pick on anyone? ( c re c) This has been editted.
Thanks. The staff at JSIS and many parent volunteers may end up parking 5 or 6 blocks away along wiht the Hamilton parents and staff and the nurses and UW students– so RPZ may extend up and farther away soon, I bet.( c re c)
Let’s build parking towers around those places. You just need to tear down a couple of houses for enough land to do that.
Of course there is need to add more parking, the RPZ is implemented because there isn’t enough street parking for everyone.
So what’s the magical threshold? I think you want to say just enough cars to need all the roadside for street parking and leaving no room for bike lanes or other stuff, but not more than that so we don’t need to build parking structures? That’s somehow would be the ideal situation for everybody?
You really don’t have any ideas other than resisting change.
Thanks for letting go of the “satire” for a moment. Honestly, I’m with you on that – dependence on motor vehicles is a blot on our world in many ways. Mineral resources, air, noise, hazards … For myself, I managed without a car until I was near 40. But when it comes to the role of parking in this problem, I think you’ve been sold a fantasy, where the reality is more about exploitive financial interests.
This is great for politicians who can convince people that getting rid of parking will help us from global warming (honestly, I have heard words coming out of O’Brien’s mouth to that effect), and that the neighborhood activists who oppose that exploitation (and have generally been a thorn in the side of those politicians) don’t care about environmental disaster as long as they can park their land yachts. Politicians thrive on phony issues that put the community in conflict and won’t ever be resolved.
But if you believe that you can save the world by cutting back on parking, the RPZ program might be the best place to start, with one simple change: limit permits to 4 per lot, instead of 4 per household. (Real lot, not unit lot.) It only makes sense, since the amount of street parking is per lot, not per household. Then if apartment builders are really as they say building for people with no cars, those people who move in will be committed to managing without a car, and won’t be tempted to think they can succumb to changed circumstances and get a car, because they’ll really have nowhere to park it, unless they happen to have one of the 4 permits allotted to that building.
I’m not making fun of people who change their minds, I did myself, there are dozens of reasons that can come up as your life changes. But if anyone can be persuaded by the rather weak means of inadequate street parking, it’s the person who has already previously decided to manage without and just needs to be encouraged to stick to it.
We have provided enough parking spaces, we’ve done it for generations.
The strongest case from the people along N 40th wasn’t that they needed to “store” their cars there, but that there’s no alternative for service delivery. They could “store” their cars around the corner, but couldn’t get fuel oil, building supplies etc. from around the corner.
It’s also an exaggeration that alternative uses “couldn’t be considered” – they certainly were considered, but SDOT had to admit that the alternative use in question didn’t fully meet their criteria for a use that would justify that kind of negative impact, it wasn’t realistically an “all ages” or major commute route. Just speculation, but it may be a sign that Durkan isn’t into the divisive politics that we saw so much of under Murray.
Divisive politicians pick a side and reliably support every initiative from that side, and the worse it is for the other side, the better – political division is their bread and butter. A good mayor will support the projects that look like they will deliver, and can the projects that don’t. It may be hard to see the balance at this point, but bear in mind, we’re still dealing with Murray/Kubly projects (a.k.a. boondoggles) here. I thought Durkan was supposed to be a Murray clone, but her style is sure better. It’s a lot harder to actually make a city like this work, in the middle of convulsive growth, than to play politics, so we’re all going to have to get used to lowered expectations, but we couldn’t afford to go on the way we were.
Human have lived more generations without cars than with cars. Not sure that we had enough parking during some period of time means we’ll live the same way we used to when there were enough parking.
The problem with 40th, 45th, 50th are similar: there isn’t enough traffic capacity going east and west. The solutions should have been broaden the roads and add more public transportation, but there just isn’t political will or resource to do those. The established home owners in the route wouldn’t allow any easy solutions.
Real alternative to car ownership is to have higher density so you can have more businesses within walking distance. It’s really just that. Japan is obviously very friendly to people who don’t have cars, but in its countryside people still need cars. Density is the alternative.
Automobile per 100 in 2017: 23.19 in Tokyo, 69.59 in Gunma. That’s the whole Tokyo-to, not just the center 23-wards. In different set of stats from 2014, it’s 7.7 in Hong Kong, 14.9 in Singapore.
If you use Tokyo number and apply to Wallingford, the number of cars would be about half that the number of households. Which means if we have zero street parking for residents, still only half of the houses would need parking. That actually means if we only mandate single-family houses to have one parking spot each and zero parking requirement for condos and apartments and zero street parking, we’d be fine.
So you see how far away we are from Tokyo-to, which contains some pretty rural areas? Let alone the true Tokyo city core or city states like Hong Kong or Singapore?
Density IS the solution. Stores need enough customers to survive, and to have enough people walking to stores means you need enough people living within the walking distance. It’s really that simple.
The refrigerator size thing is pretty straight forward also: the denser the city, the smaller the house, and the less room for fridge, but also the more stores.
These things aren’t one way. But you do realize that fridges are invented way later than there were shops and restaurants. It’s the big house fridges that made it easier for people to live less dense if you think about it. The fridge industry lured people to buy bigger and bigger products of theirs, so people have to live in bigger and bigger houses and further and further away from each other.
oh, yes, derelict RV’s can park anywhere. ( c re c)
The government only tell people when they can’t park on government land.
Actually, people in favor of the “war on cars” dislike RPZs because they let residents still park for free on city owned streets, which they see as a public incentive for car ownership (I know a few pro-HALA progressive ideologues).
Real “war on cars” believers think all parking should be paid for- put bike lanes in, then have metered parking for the last few parking spaces left. I’m not endorsing this point of view, I’m just saying radicals on either side of the “pro” and “anti” car issue dislike RPZs, because they’re a compromise solution.
Yeah, RPZs aren’t really a “war on cars” thing. Free for all parking is one of many possible ways to allocate scarce street space, RPZs are another. Both of these basically maintain the status quo of devoting most of our street space to the movement and storage of private motor vehicles.
I own a car and a don’t really think of myself as warring against them, but I do think that there are many cases where repurposing some of our street space to prioritize moving hundreds (or thousands) of bus passengers faster instead of providing convenient parking for dozens of drivers would be a smart decision.
For what it’s worth I’m not really sure that a bike lane on 40th would be popular enough to make the trade-off with parking worthwhile. Maybe it would be, but it seems like a much less obvious win than (for example) a bus lane on 45th. Literally thousands of people ride routes 44 and 62 through there each day, and it’s super slow during busy periods. If there was already a bus lane there right now and someone proposed replacing it with a few parking spots, would anyone take that proposal seriously?
As a neighborhood small business owner, I’ll add my 2 cents that it seems crazy that small business provides a service to the neighborhood, pays property taxes in the neighborhood, yet are barred from purchasing a permit to park.
Yeah, well that’s sort of the whole point of the RPZ program. The parking is full when it’s free for all. Something has to be done to fix that. One way to fix that would be to start charging a reasonable monthly fee on the order of what off-street garages charge for rent.
Instead the city has made an explicit decision to privilege neighborhood residents over other taxpaying citizens who have just as much desire to park there. It lets residents keep their nearly-free parking spots, but people who work in the neighborhood, people who go to school in the neighborhood, and people who are visiting friends or neighborhood businesses for more than two hours at a time all lose out.
Is that tradeoff worthwhile? That’s a political question. Write your council member if you feel the status quo isn’t working for you.
Small businesses benefit from 2 hour parking limits.
The 2 hour spots stay pretty full, and whether or not their perception is true, customers who drive generally have the impression that the only parking option is paid. The business primarily ends up with walkers and cyclists, which is just a reality as parking dries up.
In any case, I did my 12 rounds with the city for an RPZ exception and lost. onward!
The whole Zone 22 area is 2 hour, is that not true in the other zones? An RPZ with a 2 hour allowance should clear up a lot of 2 hour parking, if you’re in an area where commuters have been using the neighborhood for a parking lot.
With genuine thanks to Jordan for the reminder … I’ve just spent the past 15 minutes on the Seattle Services site. It’s one of the most complicated applications I’ve ever seen. Redolent of TSA level information gathering, which I do not care for. In the last step, after 4-5 screens of form filling and confirmations of my address, whether or not I’m low-income, do I like the color yellow, and have I ever eaten raw fish or laughed at a bad joke, there’s an absolutely unintelligible page to fill out, which showed up right after saying I’d have to begin my application from the start because of an error. (Which thankfully, at least apparently, turned out not to be true.) Just a warning to get a nice cup of tea ready before you apply. btw, I’m a home owner who’s lived at this address for 21 years. Hope it’s not even harder for newer renters.
Tea? Sounds like a cup of gin may be more in order.
Hey, a few ideas:
1. Provide off-street community parking below some new residential project(s) located along 45th in lieu of retail space and remove some of the street parking to both widen the street AND sidewalks to make it more pedestrian-friendly. Japan makes good use of robotic elevator lots, where many residents store their car until they are needed to travel outside of transit service (which is not often because Japan actually has effective transit).
2. Require large projects with significant parking impacts (there really ARE engineers that can accurately predict the demand) to mitigate their own impacts by providing the necessary on-site parking rather than putting even more cars on the streets. This includes public projects like the high school. Build that parking area with a nice all-weather sports field on top.
3. Allow city staff to not only identify parking impacts, but to also be able to DO something to help mitigate the adverse impacts. CM Johnson displayed his loyalty to ideology over reality when he did not support CM Herbold’s very reasonable amendment to allow city staff to examine impacts of projects in areas already experiencing over 85-percent saturation, such as Wallingford. As it stands, city staff can IDENTIFY a problem, but is not allowed to DO ANYTHING about it.
4. Prohibit residents of high density SEDU “car-less” projects from participating in local RPZs in order to “close the loop” on the marketing CHOICE by a developer to not include sufficient parking on-site needed to mitigate their impacts to adjacent properties. Studies in Portland found that residents of “car-less” projects still own cars, at an average rate of 0.6 vehicles per unit.
Just sayin’ Cheers! … and Wallytown… have a great visit with family and friends during the holiday season. We are a welcoming and inclusive neighborhood, despite what the bozos downtown erroneously believe. Together, we can (and did) make a great place even better!
Hey, a few ideas:
1. Provide off-street community parking below some new residential project(s) located along 45th in lieu of retail space and remove some of the street parking to both widen the street AND sidewalks to make it more pedestrian-friendly. Japan makes good use of robotic elevator lots, where many residents store their car until they are needed to travel outside of transit service (which is not often because Japan actually has effective transit).
2. Require large projects with significant parking impacts (there really ARE engineers that can accurately predict the demand) to mitigate their own impacts by providing the necessary on-site parking rather than putting even more cars on the streets. This includes public projects like the high school. Build that parking area with a nice all-weather sports field on top.
3. Allow city staff to not only identify parking impacts, but to also be able to DO something to help mitigate the adverse impacts. CM Johnson displayed his loyalty to ideology over reality when he did not support CM Herbold’s very reasonable amendment to allow city staff to examine impacts of projects in areas already experiencing over 85-percent saturation, such as Wallingford. As it stands, city staff can IDENTIFY a problem, but is not allowed to DO ANYTHING about it.
4. Prohibit residents of high density SEDU “car-less” projects from participating in local RPZs in order to “close the loop” on the marketing CHOICE by a developer to not include sufficient parking on-site needed to mitigate their impacts to adjacent properties. Studies in Portland found that residents of “car-less” projects still own cars, at an average rate of 0.6 vehicles per unit.
Just sayin’ Cheers! … and Wallytown… have a great visit with family and friends during the holiday season. We are a welcoming and inclusive neighborhood, despite what the bozos downtown erroneously believe. Together, we can (and did) make a great place even better!
Hey, a few ideas:
1. Provide off-street community parking below some new residential project(s) located along 45th in lieu of retail space and remove some of the street parking to both widen the street AND sidewalks to make it more pedestrian-friendly. Japan makes good use of robotic elevator lots, where many residents store their car until they are needed to travel outside of transit service (which is not often because Japan actually has effective transit).
2. Require large projects with significant parking impacts (there really ARE engineers that can accurately predict the demand) to mitigate their own impacts by providing the necessary on-site parking rather than putting even more cars on the streets. This includes public projects like the high school. Build that parking area with a nice all-weather sports field on top.
3. Allow city staff to not only identify parking impacts, but to also be able to DO something to help mitigate the adverse impacts. CM Johnson displayed his loyalty to ideology over reality when he did not support CM Herbold’s very reasonable amendment to allow city staff to examine impacts of projects in areas already experiencing over 85-percent saturation, such as Wallingford. As it stands, city staff can IDENTIFY a problem, but is not allowed to DO ANYTHING about it.
4. Prohibit residents of high density SEDU “car-less” projects from participating in local RPZs in order to “close the loop” on the marketing CHOICE by a developer to not include sufficient parking on-site needed to mitigate their impacts to adjacent properties. Studies in Portland found that residents of “car-less” projects still own cars, at an average rate of 0.6 vehicles per unit.
Just sayin’ Cheers! … and Wallytown… have a great visit with family and friends during the holiday season. We are a welcoming and inclusive neighborhood, despite what the bozos downtown erroneously believe. Together, we can (and did) make a great place even better!
Before a certain someone is triggered by reading this and shoots down all your ideas (rhymes with BJ), thank you for putting some things on the table that folks can discuss. I like a lot of your ideas very much! The one I had a question about is this:
“Provide off-street community parking below some new residential project(s) located along 45th in lieu of retail space.”
If this were to happen, wouldn’t you have to remunerate the developer/owner for the loss of retail rental? So this parking would not be free, right? Street parking is currently in the $1 – $5 an hour range across the city (ISTBC) — if the building owner charged at that same range, would that be enough to equal the retail rent they would be foregoing? I’m not against your idea, please understand…just interested in your thoughts on how it pencils out. Thanks again for your ideas.
Hey, I’ve been saying building a parking tower per block!
The only thing is that I don’t think it’s right to discriminate against high density housing. If we want requirements, we should enforce that on all. This I know: if you get engineers to calculate the parking needs, the single-family houses are going to have a higher ratio of needs of household per parking space, therefore it’s the single family houses that need to try harder to create parking spaces.
Remember I advocated no car license unless the car owner have a private parking ( can be rented space from the public parking tower of the block) at the residence? That is a very simple way of solving the problem.
You mean there are laws that need to be changed, not that something can’t be done.
Hey, a few ideas:
1. Provide off-street community parking below some new residential project(s) located along 45th in lieu of retail space and remove some of the street parking to both widen the street AND sidewalks to make it more pedestrian-friendly. Japan makes good use of robotic elevator lots, where many residents store their car until they are needed to travel outside of transit service (which is not often because Japan actually has effective transit).
2. Require large projects with significant parking impacts (there really ARE engineers that can accurately predict the demand) to mitigate their own impacts by providing the necessary on-site parking rather than putting even more cars on the streets. This includes public projects like the high school. Build that parking area with a nice all-weather sports field on top.
3. Allow city staff to not only identify parking impacts, but to also be able to DO something to help mitigate the adverse impacts. CM Johnson displayed his loyalty to ideology over reality when he did not support CM Herbold’s very reasonable amendment to allow city staff to examine impacts of projects in areas already experiencing over 85-percent saturation, such as Wallingford. As it stands, city staff can IDENTIFY a problem, but is not allowed to DO ANYTHING about it.
4. Prohibit residents of high density SEDU “car-less” projects from participating in local RPZs in order to “close the loop” on the marketing CHOICE by a developer to not include sufficient parking on-site needed to mitigate their impacts to adjacent properties. Studies in Portland found that residents of “car-less” projects still own cars, at an average rate of 0.6 vehicles per unit.
Just sayin’ Cheers! … and Wallytown… have a great visit with family and friends during the holiday season. We are a welcoming and inclusive neighborhood, despite what the bozos downtown erroneously believe. Together, we can (and did) make a great place even better!