Seattle’s Scandalous Plan to “Replace” Parking With Parking

The city of Seattle is planning to use eminent domain to seize a privately owned parking lot near its waterfront. The plan is to convert it into … a city-run parking lot.

Clearly, there is no shortage of parking on Seattle's waterfront. Image: ##http://systemicfailure.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/seattle-uses-eminent-domain-to-turn-a-parking-lot-into-a-parking-lot/## Systemic Failure##

What happened here? Well, Network blog Systemic Failure explains why the city saw fit to seize this land from a 103-year-old lady:

Around 100 on-street parking spaces will be lost during the Alaska Way Viaduct construction. To “mitigate” the parking loss, Seattle proposed leasing [Myrtle] Woldson’s parking lot. Woldson already provides parking — just at a market rate. Woldson declined the lease offer as too low. So rather than meet her price, Seattle will just seize her lot through eminent domain.

Seattle is also considering whether to build a parking garage on the lot. Because if there is one thing the waterfront lacks, it is parking.

Wow. Seattle. Way to actually worsen your parking problem. This kind of blatant eminent domain abuse should be illegal.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space lists some of the country’s hippest suburbs and attempts to synthesize the factors that contribute to their popularity. Cyclelicious says concerned parents really ought worry less about activities like cycling and more about what’s really killing people: driving. And Bike Portland reports that the city is planning to install LED lighting to mark some of its bike lanes.

  • Meriel Whitford-Price

    The person who wrote this article obviously didn’t live in that neighborhood at the time the article was written. I did, and I’m here to tell you the author doesn’t know what they are talking about. Google Maps isn’t going to give you am accurate understanding of life on the ground in downtown Seattle.

  • So you’re saying “life on the ground in downtown Seattle” requires that government steal property from citizens?

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Seattle’s New Park-and-Rides Cost a Fortune But Won’t Move Many People

By Angie Schmitt |
Seattle area voters will vote this November on a $53 billion transit expansion package. But along with new light rail lines stretching across the region, Seattle will also be getting a publicly owned parking empire. In total, the plan calls for $661 million in spending on parking at transit stations. At an astounding $80,000 per stall, that will fund 8,300 parking spots. Zach […]

Trading a Park-and-Ride for a Public Plaza and Bike Parking

By Angie Schmitt |
More cities should copy this idea for their park-and-ride transit stations: At DC Metro’s King Street station in Old Town Alexandria, plans are underway to turn parking spots into a pedestrian plaza. This goes against the grain of typical transit agency practice. Despite the fact that park-and-rides are an inefficient use of scarce land, a recent survey by researchers […]

Seattle Policy Honchos Look to Parking Reform to Make Housing Affordable

By Tanya Snyder |
Buried under headlines about Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s plans to battle “economic apartheid” are little-noticed reforms that would reduce or do away with parking quotas that inflate the cost of housing. Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee released its recommendations yesterday. Noting that about “65 percent of Seattle’s land — not just its residential […]

Curb Appeal

By Alan Durning |
Alan Durning is the executive director of Sightline. This post is #15 in the Sightline series, Parking? Lots! Imagine if you could put a meter in front of your house and charge every driver who parks in “your” space. It’d be like having a cash register at the curb. Free money! How much would you collect? Hundreds […]

There’s a (Parking) Place for Us

By Alan Durning |
This post is #14 in the Sightline series, Parking? Lots! Alan Durning is the executive director of Sightline. There are places in this world the savvy traveler would never drive with any hope of finding street parking: Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, for example, or just about anywhere in downtown Los Angeles. That’s what you […]