On The Road

I’m on a road trip from Louisville, KY to Portland, OR. (Follow me on https://www.instagram.com/parkingminute/)

As I’ve been traveling across the country I’ve visited a number of parking garages in small (and big) towns. It started kind of as a cheeky thing to do, but I’ve found that it’s a good way to see these places from a different angle, with often great panoramic views.

I’ve also noticed that these top decks are often empty, but they must have cost millions to build! Best to get SOME use out of them!

I’ll compile a more comprehensive post, but in the interim I am posting a lot of my parking garage tourism at the Parking Minute instagram, so check it out! https://www.instagram.com/parking-minute/

This morning I took TriMet to PDX on my way to San Francisco for the National Planning Conference.

I’ve been coming to and from the Portland Airport since I was a teenager and the number of times I’ve parked here could be counted on one hand and it’s been over 10 years. Generally the MAX to the terminal is the best option and off-hour arrivals or departures are usually handled by a neighbor or TNC (or combo of that and public transit).

But there are 2,400+ people who park, for free (and more who park for less than a dollar a day), at PDX every day… Port of Portland employees and airport vendors.

This is a significant figure because the Port is currently proposing to build another 2,400 stalls at the airport, ostensibly to meet rising demand for parking (the airport is expanding it’s D terminal as I write this).

According to the Port, this new parking is needed because “two or three days per week, the Long-Term Parking Garage is either full or near capacity.” When that happens, customers may use the Short-Term garage, “pushing the Short-Term Parking Garage closer to capacity!”

The Long-Term Parking Garage is, itself a $156 million expansion completed in 2010. At the time it was opened, during the recession, the Port had to close surface lots to push demand into the garage so it wouldn’t be empty.  The new project will cost another $265 million, the Port insists rental car concessions and parking fees will pay for it. I think long-term prospects for rental car businesses at airports might not be so rosy.

And as for passengers, certainly the Port wants to provide accommodating experiences for all visitors, but we have light-rail to the terminal. Will an entity with such large debt to recover from parking be incentivized to push transit as the best way to get to and from the airport? Providing a TriMet day pass with every ticket would be great, but when the Port needs that parking money flowing in, why would they offer that to passengers?

The Port should start by charging higher earning employees market rates for parking at the airport. Perhaps a mix of that and some more encouragement for passengers to take MAX would allow them to muddle through with only 17,000 stalls. 

Update: Port of Portland PIO Kama Simonds provided the following statement: “Employees have a choice: they can park in the airport employee parking lot on Alderwood (Road) for free, pay $20/month to park in the surface lot due east of the air traffic control tower, or pay $80/month to park in the parking garages.”

The Alterwood Road lot contains 2,400 stalls. The $20/month surface lot contains 450 stalls.

Yesterday was spent in and around Boulder, Colorado. I’d been to Boulder a couple of times before, most recently in 2016 for the first YIMBY conference. It’s a beautiful place, but not without its own housing supply and development fights. 

When you look at the satellite photo of the city it’s mostly low density residential, but there are three areas that stick out to me, the central Boulder business district, around the Pearl Street Mall, the University of Colorado – Boulder campus, and the area around 28th Street on the east end of town.

In the 1970s, Boulder created parking districts around the Pearl Street Mall and the UC-Boulder campus. No parking was required in these districts and district parking would be provided and paid for by an overlay property tax. Money from on-street and garage parking is spent on pedestrian/bicycle improvements, community events, and on transportation demand management (transit passes, mostly) for district employees. 

As you can see from the satellite imagery, these districts are walkable, lively, and compact. Boulder was a pioneer, for American cities, in the park-once & walk concept. I think this is no longer a great strategy for many cities, because of the risky investment that parking garages are today (and increased costs) but they pulled it off and it works well. 

The area east of Central Boulder, however, is a sea of surface parking supporting chain and big-box stores.

But thanks to the majestic Flatirons, nearly every lot in Boulder has great views. The views from the top of downtown parking structures are 360 vistas.

But these lots don’t compare to the horseshoe shaped lot at the nearby National Center for Atmospheric Research on Table Mesa. The center itself is a beautiful I.M. Pei designed campus with great exhibits on weather and climate change. The parking lot has beautiful up-close views of the foothills and Flatirons and a commanding view of Boulder and the surrounding prairies. It may be among the country’s most scenic parking lots.