Seriously, don't blame last weekend's parking fiasco on neighborhoods

I'm frequently critical of Austin's neighborhood associations, but even I don't blame the Bouldin Creek neighborhood for last weekend's parking fiasco, when simultaneous events (Carmen at the Long Center, a convention at Palmer, and the Reggae Festival at Auditorium Shores) snarled traffic for hours and caused patrons to miss their events.

The City's line is, "Hey, we wanted to put more parking there but the neighborhood associations objected."

Even doubling the Palmer parking garage's 1,200 spaces would not have dented the demand for parking last weekend.  Regardless, the City cannot, and should not, build the parking necessary to accommodate the "perfect storm."  That's a horribly inefficient use of money and space.  And, frankly, who wants to line one of our premiere parks with 5-6 story parking garages?

It's not even clear to me that the neighborhoods were acting selfishly.  Neighborhood associations usually demand more parking than is necessary because the spillover ends up on neighborhood streets.  I'm sure Bouldin Creek knew at the time that less parking on site would mean more parking in the neighborhood streets.

Austin Lyric Opera's patrons and others who use Long Center, Palmer and Auditorium Shores need to know they can get to their events.  (I'm sure the opera lost subscribers last weekend.)  The solution is better traffic management, more shuttles, more buses on Cap Metro's regular routes, and better publicity of alternative parking.  We can't build our way out of messes like last weekend's. 

Comments

[M1EK]

Disagreed. From memory, opposing the parking was precisely an effort to limit use of the facilities - and calling for more shuttles doesn't help (the shuttles wouldn't have been able to move either).

Shuttles with their own lanes, sure. But shuttles in the same traffic I went the long way around on Sunday to take the family to pitch-and-putt would have been even _worse_ than driving.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned an even smarter approach: charge more money to park and THEN run the regular buses on the weekday schedule. If there's 10 people for every parking space, the price is obviously way too low, right? (the city doesn't charge at One Texas Center on weekends if I remember correctly; obviously they _should_).

[AC]

Good point about raising the price.

Usually, neighborhood groups aren't so naive as to believe that limiting parking will limit the activities that take place. I admit I don't recall this particular battle, though.

Better traffic management could keep the traffic flowing away from the venues once parking filled up. That would let shuttle buses get around more freely.

Even Cap Metro's regular weekday schedules are probably inadequate for something like this. (For ACL last year, the #3 ran late and was packed.) Cap Metro should view this as a potential money-maker: run buses up and down the main drags with a "special event" sign and charge $2 bucks/trip.

[Bruce]

I noticed the increased traffic downtown last weekend while driving around, but I wasn't attending any of the events and wasn't badly impacted.

I like the idea of charging more for parking. Charge a lot more. There should be a financial disincentive for each person to take their own car downtown. Instead they should be incented to--OMG I'm going to say it!--carpool or take public transit.

As more people move into downtown and we gain more cultural infrastructure, these traffic problems are only going to get worse. The solution is not more parking, it's good light rail.

[M1EK]

It would be difficult to keep traffic flowing away from this thing while still letting shuttles through. (Not impossible, but difficult). I don't know that Austin's ever really solved this problem, much less even figured out that it IS a problem - people act like they still think there's "magic shuttle-bus dust" just like the magic streetcar dust that makes them able to get through the lines of cars.

Anyways, charge a hell of a lot more for parking and the rest of it will sort itself out one way or another.