Downtown Parking

[dsjeffries]

I may ask where do you think we need parking structures to go in? We have 3 with in a short distance of the Blue Dome district, several surrounding the BOk Center, the Williams Garage expansion and the Pop Culture Museum garage will serve the Brady District just fine with plenty of over flow parking at OSU Tulsa for baseball games.

The mentality that we have to have a garage with in a block of everything downtown is nonsense and we will be doing nothing to add value to any district, and just adding to the glut of parking we already have.

I don't think we need to have a garage within a block of everything, and didn't imply that. The point I attempted to make is that replacing our many surface lots with a couple garages would help free up land for real development. Would I rather have more transit than more parking? Absolutely. But first, we need to get rid of the surface lots we have and actually use the land we've decimated. And we have to build up a residential, commercial, entertainment and office density downtown in the meantime.

[TheArtist]

  I have said it over and over, we have got to transition to downtown "transit" or we will be adding LOTs more parking garages.  Just the talk of all the ones they are considering now, with really what is not that much new development going on is depressing.  How many more parking garages will we then want to add as even more development goes in?  A lot of the parking garages we have already sit half empty or more when they are open, and are often closed in the evening.  My friend uses the parking garage on main when he works downtown and says it closes early and he has never seen it more than half full.  The parking garage at 6th and Boulder is empty during the evenings when I walk by it to go to the museum.  The vast seas of church and college parking lots south side of downtown and in the east end would be ripe parking places during many a time/day/evening if there was transit making a loop.  The parking garages by the Arena and Civic Center are often available, and so on.   

  Take the money you would spend on parking garages and put it into a downtown transit, circulator route that had nice transit stops, posted times and pick-ups every 7-10 minutes. No it wouldn't be used all the time, but neither are the parking garages.  It would greatly alleviate the desire and even the need for other developers to feel like they too have to add the expense of parking to any new development they are considering.  It would gradually allow for more density and pedestrian friendly fabric to be built and that in itself would increase ridership and so on. 

  How much would it cost to purchase two small busses, maintain them, and hire the bus drivers to drive them per year?  Anyone care to make a guesstimate?

  They are talking about adding easily 40-50million dollars, or more, worth of parking garages. (Just added what a 6-8million dollar expansion on one?)  How would that compare to running the downtown bus service over say a 10 or 20 year time span?

[LandArchPoke]

I don't think we need to have a garage within a block of everything, and didn't imply that. The point I attempted to make is that replacing our many surface lots with a couple garages would help free up land for real development. Would I rather have more transit than more parking? Absolutely. But first, we need to get rid of the surface lots we have and actually use the land we've decimated. And we have to build up a residential, commercial, entertainment and office density downtown in the meantime.

Trust me I agree. Did you see the last map I posted of the walking distance from the 3 garages around 4th and Cincinnati, the Williams Garage, and the City Hall Garage (if they were to open it to public). The Blue Dome has MORE than enough parking to support the infill of a lot of those surface lots with out having to build another structured parking facility. The capacity is there, it'll just require people to walk 1000 feet instead of 300.

The same thing can be said about the Brady. The Williams garage will serve just fine for the area, and if the garage gets built for the Pop Museum even better, then add the City parking garage which is accessible in a short walking distance to the Brady as well. I think we are several years off in development from needing any more public parking spaces needing to be built.

[LandArchPoke]

 I have said it over and over, we have got to transition to downtown "transit" or we will be adding LOTs more parking garages.  Just the talk of all the ones they are considering now, with really what is not that much new development going on is depressing.  How many more parking garages will we then want to add as even more development goes in?  A lot of the parking garages we have already sit half empty or more when they are open, and are often closed in the evening.  My friend uses the parking garage on main when he works downtown and says it closes early and he has never seen it more than half full.  The parking garage at 6th and Boulder is empty during the evenings when I walk by it to go to the museum.  The vast seas of church and college parking lots south side of downtown and in the east end would be ripe parking places during many a time/day/evening if there was transit making a loop.  The parking garages by the Arena and Civic Center are often available, and so on.  

  Take the money you would spend on parking garages and put it into a downtown transit, circulator route that had nice transit stops, posted times and pick-ups every 7-10 minutes. No it wouldn't be used all the time, but neither are the parking garages.  It would greatly alleviate the desire and even the need for other developers to feel like they too have to add the expense of parking to any new development they are considering.  It would gradually allow for more density and pedestrian friendly fabric to be built and that in itself would increase ridership and so on.  

  How much would it cost to purchase two small busses, maintain them, and hire the bus drivers to drive them per year?  Anyone care to make a guesstimate?

  They are talking about adding easily 40-50million dollars, or more, worth of parking garages. (Just added what a 6-8million dollar expansion on one?)  How would that compare to running the downtown bus service over say a 10 or 20 year time span?

Exactly, well put. The money going into parking garages could have been invested into transit that would open up more access to other parking areas. Instead of building that new garage at 4th/5th & Detroit/Elgin take that money and build a trolley line (or shuttle) along Elgin from Home Depot to OSU-Tulsa. Boom! The access to even more parking than the other garages I've already pointed out with in walking distance, that are already empty on weekends and evening, is solved.