Don’t get me started on flippin’ parking ‘kiosks’...
Used to be I could go downtown, park, drop a quarter or two in the meter right next to my car (or use CC), and immediately go about enjoying lunch or some shopping with friends and local merchants. Parking was seamless, quick, and uncomplicated. Now I go downtown and the first thing that happens is I get a homework assignment (and tell some data center where I am, at what time, for how long, and in what vehicle... but that’s another subject entirely... kinda...). All just because some unclear-on-the-concept bureaucrat at City Hall fell for some salesman’s pitch. I avoid going downtown now, sadly. More sadly downtown businesses are closing right and left, after reporting massive reductions in foot traffic and revenue immediately upon removal of the ‘outdated’ meters and installation of the kiosks. It’s been over two years, and we just lost another decades-old mainstay retailer last week. Not good.
Our little town on the San Fran Peninsula still has 2 hours free parking on the street and in two parking plazas behind either side of Main Street. Those parking plazas have been there for 80 years and they work great.
Now the bastards on the city council want to convert one to a city park and there were plans to build multi-story housing on the other. The developer won’t even be required to put enough underground parking in the project. Governments at every level are so brain-dead and corrupt.
The STATE of CA has demanded that every town must accept its “fair share” of housing. You cannot simply declare “we are all built out and we aren’t going to play that game.” The state sues towns to oblivion to comply. Our town went through FIVE revisions to its “housing element” of the plan and the state rejected them all. The legal costs were killing us. The town finally gave up and did what the state wants. Now there’s a HUGE 5-story building topping-out on Main Street; since incorporation 75 years ago, the town has had a strict 2-story height limit. The state created what they called a “bonus” for developers to build bigger buildings. It’s all infuriating and sickening.