BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

No, it should be free transit & Double-priced parking. Oh, and they give you $5 for parking a bike or walking in.

True. I don't understand how the man that wanted to privatize the parking garages to raise revenue can turn around and make parking free during one of Downtown's biggest non-sports related weekend.

My wife and I are going to Light Up Night tomorrow and it would cost us $9 to take the bus but it's "free" to drive.

young men often don't have young ideas

Find $330M, make the entire transit system fare-free 24/7/365, and see what happens.

You don't pay to use elevators in a building, do you? You don't pay to use the people mover at the airport, do you? It's built into the overall system. Rather a revisit of the pay-for-the-roads argument.

The goal is to encourage downtown shopping, so they want to attract rich people (in cars), not poor people (on transit).

And transit service to downtown is much better than the service to malls, so many people relying on transit already have that incentive to shop downtown. If they're not on a transit route that serves a mall, odds are they'd have to change buses (downtown) to reach one. Making buses free doesn't give them much of an additional incentive to shop downtown.

Sure, there's a larger picture, but for this they're just looking at downtown holiday shopping.

Making driving easier is the duty of good government. Making it easier to ride a bus, however, is socialism.

You have been reported.

I'm John Boehner and I approve of this message.

Free Traffic Jams for Everyone With A Car!!! YAAAAAAY!

In other news, bike parking is free year round, and the trails are low traffic routes. Pedal On.

I think free public transit would be a fascinating study, even if you could only do it for a short 1 to 3 months.

Would ridership increase until the point of overcrowding then swing back the other way because the buses were too crowded? Would people traverse the city on weekends just because it was free? How much would traffic congestion and pollution change? How would this affect stress levels of commuters? Health? Where would routes need to change to meet the rider demand?

Interesting....now, where did I put those Federal Grant request forms.

I think free transit might have less impact than you might think.

IMO, more reliable service would have more impact on working commuters. I make considerable allowances in order to use transit instead of driving, such as waiting at bus stops for 45 min to an hour when it would take me 20 min max if I just drove. But I am making allowances based on ideals that most people would not accept. Also, if I take a bus to get to important work meetings, I am stressed as F**k that I'm going to make it, "free"-ness would not change that.

From the google machine:

http://www.planetizen.com/node/37530

The goal is to encourage downtown shopping, so they want to attract rich people (in cars), not poor people (on transit).

But with no way to verify people actually spend their money. Will people really decide to shop downtown just because they can save $5 on parking? Not to mention that well off people live all along the T line.

we can have free parking after we install red light cameras at all intersections downtown.

we already have free downtown t service, yes?

@sloaps we already have free downtown t service, yes?

Instead of walking for 5 minutes, we can go wait 10 minutes to take the T, AND IT'S FREE ! ! !

For me that's always been an eye-roller.

I know there are people for whom that is a comfort. Better, say, than navigating downtown on wheelchair perhaps?

It still makes shake my head at all the RAH! RAH! about it.

I am seeing a lot of reference made lately to "rich people (in cars)." Is the presumption of this Board that most people that drive cars and/or do not live in the City are wealthy? And what counts as "wealthy?"

Only one person used the word rich. I said "well off" and I include myself in that group.

edit: I see that you said "lately" not, "in this thread"

I said "rich people (in cars)", trying to explain the thinking behind free downtown holiday-season parking. A more precise version might be that the average transit user is more likely to be poor than the average motorist.

Free downtown transit has less to do with benefiting riders by providing a useful service for free, and more to do with reducing delays downtown by enabling pay-enter/pay-exit.

What cracks me up is that the misguided belief that people don't shop downtown because it costs money to park. If they won't spend $5 to park what makes anyone think they will spend money shopping or eating.

If they won't spend $5 to park what makes anyone think they will spend money shopping or eating.

I made the same point regarding extended hours for parking enforcement. Someone who's going to spend $50 on a nice dinner won't spend $2.50 on parking for an hour or two?

In addition to the $6,000 annual cost of car ownership?

Where exactly are people going to shop at downtown anyways? Macys is like the only normal store down there. Outside of that is all niche stores and people shopping there probably don't care about $5 parking.

Someone who's going to spend $50 on a nice dinner won't spend $2.50 on parking for an hour or two?

People are funny about money.

(I know that's a news flash for you all. I hope the shock doesn't hurt anyone.)

I've known people that would drive an hour each way to go to a "free" event, instead of paying $6 at the door for a similar closer event.

http://xkcd.com/951/

That's why after two hours of trying to figure out how to outsmart Amazon to get additional free Prime membership I just paid them

@dwillen that is easily one of my favorite xkcds.

@pierce is it possible?

@ pierce

I just paid them

@dmtroyer @pierce is it possible?