quote:
Originally posted by TheArtist
Ok, let me see if I get this. Your saying that, each surface parking space should be taxed by the city? I say surface parking because supposedly we still want inexpensive parking available but dont want parking lots, and would prefer what parking there was as parking garages (hopefully with ground floor retail in most areas)or underground parking. I would even give some sort of tax incentive to parking garages that had ground floor retail versus one that didn't to incentivise those being built. I would also not tax street side parking. If thats the case I am with ya and lets do it before any Wal-mart or such goes in. [
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But there are some things that I wonder about. Much of what I see as being surface parking downtown is either owned by the churches and not taxed, the college and I don't think we want to tax their parking, or small businesses that don't exactly have the money to to build structured parking. How would this effect Mc Nellies for example? And how much of a tax would you impose on each parking space that would make it enough to change peoples behavior or impact a companies bottom line?
Hopefully as downtown fills up and becomes desirable, property will becomes more valuable. Structured parking will then replace surface parking.
I don’t actually want inexpensive parking period. I understand that parking lots are destroying and have destroyed most of downtown and that needs to be reversed. However parking encourages driving. I think more on street parking should be provided and the city should relax the rules on parking at angles to the curb. I think the fairest way of taxing would be to tax the land area of a parking lot. That would encourage multi storey car parks, but not letting them off the hook completely when it comes to parking charges.
I think it is strange that a church needs a parking lot at all. Can’t they share a parking lot with an office, that would be empty on the weekend or evening? I also think there needs to be a reduction in parking that should not be limited in a way to hit the big guy, everyone needs to make changes. I think allowing on street parking would help. I think one of the main things is to prevent what suburban nation refers to as parking for the last Saturday before Christmas, ie making sure there is always mountains of spaces, other words 364 days a year there is over supply. I think OU Tulsa has way too much parking, so does ORU, I never drove to university. I think the universities would be a great place to encourage the development of a public transport hub.
As for how much to tax parking, I don’t know. It would have to be enough to change behaviour though anything less would just be fund raising. The money would have to be ploughed into public transport initiatives to create a viable alternative.
