Comments on Breakfast links: Full spaces, empty spaces - Greater Greater Washington

Comment by Bianchi

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:49:37 EDT

Deutschlander Verkehrspolitik uberalles!

Comment by w

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:42:56 EDT

Germany gets short shrift in the USA press despite their long and incredibly creative bike friendly cities , transit, long distance rail [ entire long distance rail cars are devoted to bicycles] and their towns and cities in general. The Dutch & Danes get all of the credit- but Germany - which has lower cycling percentages- in most likliehood- has the largest amount of cyclists and car-free people in Europe. I go there at least once a year- and am continuously blown away by the new and changing bicycle initiatives I have seen. They also invented the bike share concept- but this has NEVER been reoprted on in the USA. Deutsche Rail initiated a bike share program in the late 90's in many German cities. It was successful- and led to the French starting their own. Even hilly towns in Germany have tons of cyclists. Just go to Tubingen and see for yourself.

Comment by jaime

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:41:03 EDT

Andy: to follow Alex B.'s reply to you - my understanding is that DCUSA's 1000+ parking spaces have nothing to do with "development that is planned" and everything to do with a combination of parking minimum requirements and the desires of the anchor tenants (and Target owns it's store while the others lease, so they certainly had more pull here). Also, to second Alex B., at this point in time, future development around DCUSA will be required to meet parking minimums on their sites, regardless of the hundreds of empty spaces at DCUSA. Sure, they can fight the minimums, but they certainly don't have to, especially if the fight will add cost to their projects. It'd be great if future development is able to utilize the excess parking - but there are just too many assumptions there that can fall through, which lead us to "repeatedly citing this as an example of excessive parking." It was built to suit the perceived needs of the DCUSA tenants, those perceptions were wrong, and now we're being asked to foot the bill for upkeep that the parking facility should have been able to pay itself had it been better utilized.

Comment by Alex B.

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:41:37 EDT

Andy, so what is that development? Will that development then be relieved of on-site parking requirements? You can say this is planning, but where's the plan?

Comment by Andy

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:36:51 EDT

Frequently, the DMPED's office gets things wrong, but not this time. It seems that Sean Madigan's statement that they expect greater use of the garage in the future refers not to implementing programs to encourage driving, but that the garage was designed to provide necessary parking for development that is planned or in the pipeline: future development whose employees, customers and residents obviously are not yet using the facility. After all, the underground parking can't be added later. This is planning and this is something that David has persistently ignored in repeatedly citing this as an example of excessive parking.

Comment by Omari

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:34:11 EDT

"Maryland's streets are especially dangerous"--maybe people walk more in Maryland than they do in other car-friendly places? I mean, if 100 people walk in Maryland and 10 die, and 10 people walk in Arizona and 3 die, which is more dangerous? On the garage: "the city expects greater use of the garage in the future: “We’re working on a couple of steps so that we get the biggest bang for our buck there.”" Wow, that is the best argument against parking that I have ever seen. We built too much parking. Instead of saying "wow, great, we didn't need as much parking as we thought," they're saying "let's generate more cars so we can fill up those extra parking spaces!" Of course the cars have to GET THERE, so let's generate more traffic for District and regional streets! Unbelievably stupid.