If it’s between walking/biking (free), taking the bus (free w/ transfer), and driving to the light rail station ($5-6 per day), people will have a choice to make, and I don’t see an issue in providing a bit of parking for people who are willing to pay for it and/or are unable to use other modes for whatever reason. Plus parking garages are great for local businesses and reduce the amount people drive around looking for parking.

The other thing we are doing is potentially using park-and-rides as an anchor tenant for a mini-hub that could eventually develop into a full fledged TOD. Though the SODO example is not the best here. A far better example would be if we built light rail to West Seattle Junction and put the park-and-ride there, or Ballard. The park-and-ride brings everyone to a single place, where they stop, get out of their cars, and get on a train. Once you have a hub like this, there is an incentive for developers to build retail and services at the park and ride to enable trip-chaining. For example, a daycare and a grocery store could be built near the park-and-ride so that people can drive to one place, drop their kids off at daycare and then ride the train to downtown. Then, on their way home, pick up their kids go grocery shopping and drive home. All in a single vehicle trip (home to park-and-ride) rather than several spread out over several locations.

Once all these services are in place at the park-and-ride, the next step is to build housing within walking distance so that SOME people can skip the drive and do everything car-free. The critical thing to remember though is that you can’t build those retail services on a customer base within walking distance alone unless the density is through the roof. The only way to create a center that has everything a person could need within walking distance is to have that center ALSO draw customers from the surrounding area.

Even if the intent is ultimately to build density through the roof so that the park-and-ride is no longer necessary, this can’t be done overnight, so the park-and-ride serves as a transition facility while the density is being built.

It is actually far easier to build a pedestrian friendly neighborhood around a parking garage than it is to build it around a bunch of building that all provide their own parking.

Also, we are not talking about people driving into the neighborhoods, we are talking about people who live in the neighborhoods, but not within walking distance of the station (which is the majority of the population of SE Seattle) driving to the heart of their neighborhood and then stopping, parking and getting on a train. The alternative is that these residents drive through not only their own neighborhood, but every other neighborhood on their way to downtown.

A true neighborhood center ought to be a magnet, drawing people from all around. You can’t support substantial retail solely based on people within walking distance unless you are in Manhattan. Even Belltown and Capitol Hill draw patrons from farther afield and utilize public parking garages and on street parking.

We also have a chicken and egg thing here. Why would people want to live in a dense neighborhood unless the majority of their daily needs can be met within the neighborhood? That means retail development. You can’t draw people to density without the retail and you can build the retail without the density. The solution is a park-and-ride which draws the existing population to the center, then you can build the density over time.

Finally, we’ve been assuming that this park-and-ride we speak of is a single use facility. In reality, it would work far better as shared parking. It could, for example provide all the parking for TOD residents. Thus, new TOD buildings could be built without any of their own parking. This makes development far less expensive, allowing for greater affordability and density. It also decreases the temptation to drive since the residents have to walk a few blocks to get to their car, and once they’ve done so, they are already at the train station so they might as well ride.

The thing that keeps people in a compact form (i.e. prevents sprawl) is the full cost (time + money) of their commute. If a new technology developed that enabled people to travel at 500 miles per hour to anywhere they wanted, Seattle would sprawl all the way to Montana.

Right now, congestion adds to the time cost of commuting and high gas prices add to the monetary cost. These are the primary constraints on sprawl. If you give someone a light rail line, at taxpayer expense, with a park and ride at the end of the line, you have just reduced their commute costs. Whereas without the light rail, person X would have given up their suburban house for an in-city condo, now they can continue to enjoy the benefits of suburban living while passing the costs onto the taxpayer.

A park-and-ride on the outskirts of downtown does not have this effect. The suburbanite still has to pay the costs of his commute.

Does a park-and-ride on the outskirts of downtown reduce VMT? Yes, far more so than a park-and-ride at the end of the line, counter-intuitive as that may sound. The reason is that, per my first post, getting the cars out of downtown makes downtown a much more pleasant place to be. It also makes downtown development much cheaper. Both of these things encourage more commercial development downtown, which increases downtown’s gravity. Now, because we have not built a light rail with parking at the ends, people have to face congestion on their way TO downtown, but not in downtown itself. This gives them a powerful incentive to move closer in creating a more compact urban form. This reduces total VMT because origins and destinations are closer together.

Contrast with our current plan to spread light rail for 30 miles. As mentioned, this makes suburban living cheaper and encourages sprawl (if there are park-and-rides at the end of the lines). As the population spreads, economic activity also spreads. As jobs spread out, they become virtually impossible to serve with transit, and these clusters act as a counter-gravity to downtown, effectively pulling people away. Why live in Seattle? There’s just as many jobs on the East Side and land is cheaper.

No amount of light or heavy rail can overcome the increase in VMT that is caused by a more dispersed urban form.

Now back to our discussion of a Park-and-ride in Sodo. Such a park-and-ride would be of great value to the people of West Seattle, thus this facility makes living in West Seattle more desirable. Without it, living in west Seattle is less desirable. Putting a park-and-ride at the end of the line, means that people who live close in (e.g. West Seattle) still have to drive into downtown and face all the horrors therein, while people in Lynnwood get to use a park-and-ride and take the train. This system essentially makes the commute from Lynnwood easier than the commute from West Seattle and thus encourages people to live in Lynnwood rather than West Seattle, despite the fact that West Seattle is closer in and has the potential to be much more energy efficient if it were only planned for.

We’re shooting ourselves in the foot with this whole park-and-rides-at-the-end-but-not-in-the-middle thing. One should note however, that Sound Transit doesn’t even measure the effects their projects have on VMT, on congestion, on sprawl or on greenhouse gas emissions. That is not their mission. Their mission is to build a regional transit system and that is what they are doing. If you want a system that reduces VMT, the key is to tell the planners and engineers that that is what you want. Same goes for congestion or global warming. If we are not clear as to what the goals are, engineers and planners can’t achieve them.

Giant parking structures on the edges of downtown won’t encourage any of these changes — it will just change where people park.

I’m not a fan of park and rides as I don’t see them encouraging changes in development or behavior. I can understand park and rides far away from urban areas as they, at least, significantly reduce SOV miles driven, but a park and ride that close to downtown won’t even have that benefit.

While it would potentially tie up money that could be used for something else, the parking garage would also be a potential source of additional revenue.

During the commute I don’t see it having a noticeable affect. If it enables some people to drive the increased number of cars clogging the roads will drive other people to transit. It will certainly drive up ridership on LINK and most likely it’s financial bottom line. If it improves mobility in the Seattle area it will mean more jobs and more people will go out and enjoy things like concerts. Both of those will increase energy usage, VMT and GDP. No free lunch.

I’m OK with it being hard to drive downtown. I don’t think more cars is the answer; it’s already the problem. The issue with this parking garage isn’t that cut and dry. I’d like to see it as a step toward gradually moving the cars farther away from the downtown core and increasing transit options.

Letting the private sector buy the property might be the preferred way to decide what is the best usage; both now and as things change going forward. Unless there’s some reason to believe that a private buyer would do something contrary to the best public good then why should ST invest it’s capital in the property? There’s certainly no lack of projects which the public sector will not fund which ST is mandated to enable.

The only argument I see for ST buying it would be that public money should for some reason, and maybe there’s a good one, subsidize and preserve parking there. One thought is that if ST buys it they can charge for parking and transit (e.g. you paid to park you paid to ride). Or, maybe there’s some other high value reason like maintenance facility which ST has in mind now or in the future.

I’m not sure that it’s a given congestion on I-5, the Viaduct and the West Seattle bridge would increase. I guess that somewhat depends on pricing. A private owner would likely charge more and mitigate that effect. For evening events I think it would increase transit use from people that need the car after the event and would otherwise park downtown or at the Seattle Center.

Following a lot of events late night transit is spotty to non existent. The option to park near the station in SODO and take transit downtown or to the Seattle Center would work [especially for West Seattle] and remove a lot of cars that would otherwise be attempting to battle their way through downtown traffic during the evening commute.

I hope that Sound Transit doesn’t waste dollars on a garage within City limits. If Sound Transit doesn’t buy this structure, a private developer will, and will charge for it.

I’d be shocked if any developer bought a three story parking garage in SODO and tore it down for TOD. It seems more likely that nearby single story structures will get the axe first.