It’s Parking Madness Time — Send Us Your Parking Disasters!

Fields of parking near the El Cerrito BART station. Image via Google Maps
Fields of parking near the El Cerrito BART station. Image via Google Maps

It’s March and that means it’s Parking Madness season at Streetsblog. Today we’re launching our fifth annual tournament in search of North America’s worst parking blight, and we’re switching things up a little.

In previous years, the Parking Madness competition was open to pockmarked downtowns, asphalt-covered waterfronts, and sad windswept parking craters of all stripes. This year we’re looking for something more specific: crazy amounts of parking near transit stations.

Transit systems work best when they make places more walkable. If people can easily walk to transit, more people can ride, and fewer people will need to drive. But a lot of transit stops are surrounded by surface lots and parking decks. They repel pedestrians, generate more car traffic than foot traffic, and drain transit agency resources that could be used to run more trains and buses instead.

We need to do better — hence this exercise in public shaming. Streetsblog is looking for 16 of the most indefensible parking-saturated transit stations to populate this year’s Parking Madness bracket. Nominations in urban settings will have a better shot at making the cut than suburban park-and-rides.

To nominate an entry, send visual evidence, the precise location, and a written description of why it’s so bad to angie (at) streetsblog (dot) org, or leave the information in the comments. To be eligible, the entry must be in a North American city and cannot have competed in previous years — you can check here, here, here, and here. Entries are due March 10.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Parking Madness: Little Rock vs. Atlanta

|
Of all the places that have been marred by surface parking, the saddest might be city blocks served by transit, where walking should reign and driving should not be necessary. We're seeing in this year's Parking Madness tournament that there's an abundance of these places around the United States.

Parking Madness 2019 Round 1: Oakland vs. Atlanta

|
We’re on to our second round one match in this year’s Parking Madness competition — comparing different cities that have repaired their parking craters with useful infill development: more city! This competition highlights a really hopeful trend underway in cities; Parking craters all over the country are disappearing. In our first matchup, Minneapolis knocked off a […]

Parking Madness: Federal Way vs. Montreal

|
We’re just getting started with Parking Madness 2016 — our annual hunt for North America’s worst parking craters. So far, Washington, D.C., and Rutland, Vermont, have advanced to the second round. Today’s matchup pits the Seattle suburb of Federal Way against the pride of Quebec — Montreal. It’s the second Canadian parking crater in this year’s competition, reminding us that the United […]

Parking Madness Elite Eight: El Cerrito vs. Chicago

|
We’re two weeks into our Parking Madness competition, and only a few parking craters are still standing. Today’s Elite Eight matchup pairs a Bay Area suburb with America’s third largest city: It’s El Cerrito, California vs. Chicago. First up is El Cerrito, which was singled out for shame by one of our readers because of […]