SI Online

Tale of Two Parking Garages

Posted: April 15, 2009

The first garage is owned by the US Postal Service and it is located in SODO next door to the Sound Transit station on Lander between 4th and 6th Avenues. The garage has been closed to public parking for years because the postal service is subject to Homeland Security restrictions that forbid public parking adjacent to federal facilities.

But, the garage is now up for sale, and, assuming the new owner can dodge SODO sleeper cells and Somali gunboats, the garage could be reopened for public parking just in time to meet the parking needs of the people who will flock to the Sound Transit station to hop aboard the Link Light Rail service scheduled to begin this summer.

But, since the garage went on the market in January, private sector interest has failed to materialize due to uncertainty about real estate values and the broader economy. Which leads to the question. Why doesn't the City of Seattle or Sound Transit buy the garage, glom onto the revenue stream from the Sound Transit park and riders, and in the process meet the community need for more parking?

Seems logical to us, but it appears this is one of those good ideas that is going nowhere very quickly.

The poor economy is one factor, but trust us, the real reason is something called "car enabling".

You have probably lived your entire life to this point with out encountering the term. But in the upper echelons of super duper professional transportation thinking that guides enlightened transportation agencies, car enabling refers to the fact that certain things contribute to our continued reliance on automobiles just as some people engage in behavior that unwittingly encourages others, often loved ones, to persist in alcoholism and/or drug addiction.

Parking garages per se are considered highly car enabling, on a par with guys who buy beer for kids hanging out in convience store parking lots. But, parking garages for transit facilities are far worse, about the same as hooking up Aunt Mae intravenously to a 100 gallon barrell of Old Irish Rose. If government is going to invest in transit service, the least the rest of us can do is leave our cars at home and walk, bike, carpool, ride the bus, swim or levitate to the nearest transit stop.

But, this leads to the other part of our story. What if the transit station is located in an area where no one lives and where the bus service is notoriously inadequate? You know, like SODO, where we find the second parking garage that is part of this tale.

The second parking garage stands just south of Royal Brougham on 6th Avenue. It was built as part of the enormous Metro bus base and maintenance facility located just east of the sports stadiums and every workday this garage is stuffed to the rafters with, oh my gosh, cars, belonging to, you've got to be kidding, Metro bus drivers.

Yep, the people who professionally drive the buses that the rest of us are supposed to be riding know they can't count on Metro bus service to get to SODO, and if you peer inside the Metro employee parking garage, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that good fuel mileage is not always the top concern when Metro bus drivers buy cars, vans and pick up trucks.

And, just like the bus drivers, the future Sound Transit riders will start driving to the SODO station this summer where they'll beg, borrow or steal curb side parking spots, then walk past an empty parking garage to get on the light rail train.

Somebody should report this to Al Gore. We're going to call Aunt Mae and see if she'll enable us to rig up a second feeding tube.